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THOMAS JEFFERSON 
By Nancy Clifton M. Randolph after Thomas Sully 


JEFFERSON aXp HAMILTON 
The Struggle for Democracy 


In America 


BY 
CLAUDE G. BOWERS 


AUTHOR OF ‘THE PARTY BATTLES OF THE JACKSON PERIOD”® 


With Illustrations 





BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
The Riberside Press Cambridge 


COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY CLAUDE G. BOWERS 


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 


TENTH IMPRESSION, JANUARY, 1927 


The Riverside Bress 
CAMBRIDGE - MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. 


\ 


REMOTE STORAGE 


PREFACE 


All American history has since run along the lines marked out by the antagonism of Jef- 
ferson and Hamilton. Our history is sometimes charged with a lack of picturesqueness 
because it does not deal with the belted knight and the moated grange. But to one who 
considers the moral import of events, it is hard to see how anything can be more picturesque 
than the spectacle of these two giant antagonists contending for political measures which 
were so profoundly to affect the lives of millions of human beings yet unborn. 

JoHN Fisker 


T is the author’s purpose, in developing the stirring story of the 
Plutarchian struggle of Jefferson and Hamilton, to show that 
without belted knights the period was picturesque and dramatic. 
The extraordinary men who gave and took lusty blows did not, as 
some would have us think, confine themselves to calm academic 


_ discussions of elemental principles. The dignified steel engravings 


of the participants, with which we are familiar, give no impression 
of the disheveled figures seen by their contemporaries on the 
battle-field. 

This battle-field was rich in movement and color. There was 
tragedy and pathos, much of comedy, something of the grotesque. 
Here we shall meet marching mobs, witness duels and fist-fights, 
turbulent mass meetings, public dinners in groves and taverns, 
hangings in effigy, and champions of democracy in the galleries of 
theaters, pelting the aristocrats in the pits, and coercing the 
orchestras into playing ‘La Marseillaise.’ It was in the midst of 
such scenes as these that Jefferson and Hamilton fought the battle 
of the fundamentals. 

The struggle of these two giants surpasses In importance any 
other waged in America because it related to elemental differences 
that reach back into the ages, and will continue to divide mankind 
far into the future. The surrender at Yorktown ended one phase 
of the Revolution, but it was not complete until, after twelve 
years of nationhood, it was definitively determined that this 
should be not only a republic, but a democratic republic. That 
was the real issue between Jefferson and Hamilton. 

The passions of the period still persist, and much of myth has 


vi PREFACE 


been built up by idolaters and enemies about both leaders. It has 
seemed possible to the author to tell the story of their struggle 
with complete justice to both. The part each played in the crea- 
tion of the Nation was essential. It has been the purpose to depict 
these two men and their associates as they really were in the heat 
of controversy, neither sparing their weaknesses nor exaggerating 
their virtues; to paint them as men of flesh and blood with pas- 
sions, prejudices, and human limitations; to show them at close 
quarters wielding their weapons, and sometimes, in the heat of the 
fight, stooping to conquer; and to uncover their motives as they 
are clearly disclosed in the correspondence of themselves and 
friends. This has necessitated the demolishment of some fashion- 
able myths, when myths have obstructed the view to truth. 

The facts as here set forth throw a vivid light on the causes 
of the collapse of the Federalist Party, which, in the average of 
its leadership, was, perhaps, the most brilliant, and certainly the 
most attractive, in American history. Men of wonderful charm 
they were, but they were singularly lacking in an understanding of 
the spirit of their times and country. They fell, as we shall find, 
because they neither had nor sought contact with the average 
man, and sternly set themselves against the overwhelming current 
of democracy. 

Even so, we shall find an explanation of their distrust of popular 
government in the illiteracy of the times, the exaggerated notions 
of freedom that prevailed, and the levity with which so many 
looked on financial obligations. It is easier to understand the 
Hamiltonian distrust of democracy than to comprehend the 
faith of Jefferson — a faith of tremendous significance in history. 
Quite as remarkable as his faith was the ability of Jefferson to 
mobilize, organize, and discipline the great individualistic mass 
of the towns, the remote farms along the Savannah, the almost 
unbroken wilds of the Western wilderness. With a few notable 
exceptions, he was forced to rely for assistance on lieutenants 
pathetically inferior to the group of brilliant men who sat on 
the Federalist board of strategy. He won because he was a 
host within himself, capable of coping single-handed against 
the combined geniuses of the opposition in the field of practical 
politics. 


PREFACE vil 


A liberal use has been made of the newspapers of the period; 
not only of the descriptions of actual events, but of the false 
rumors and stories that entered into the creation of the prejudices 
that always play their part in the affairs of men. In determining 
why a given result was forced by public opinion, it is no more 


' necessary to know what the truth was than to know what the 


# 


people who formed that opinion thought the truth to be. 

Along with the struggles in Congress, the bickerings in streets, 
coffee-houses, and taverns, the actions of mobs and mass meetings, 
it has been thought important to show the part ‘society’ played in 
the drama — for it was a significant part. This was inevitable in a 
clear-cut fight between democracy and aristocracy. The elegant 
home of Mrs. Bingham was scarcely less identified with the Feder- 
alists than was that of Lady Holland with the English Whigs, or 
that of Madame Rolland with the party of the Gironde. The pet- 
tings which the Otises and Harpers there received after the battles 


in the House were very real rewards to men of their temperament. 


The part played by men and women of fashion in the politics of the 
time will appear in the ostracism of Democrats from their charmed 
circle, when even Jefferson, snubbed, was driven for solace to the 
solitude of the library of the Philosophical Society. 

Throughout the struggle we shall find the forces well defined — 
aristocracy against democracy, and sometimes we shall see it illus- 
trated with theatrical exaggeration, as when the Philadelphia 
aristocrats of the army that marched against the Whiskey Boys, 
on prancing horses and in broadcloth uniforms, paraded their 
ragged, weather-beaten prisoners of the frontier through the 
fashionable streets for the delectation of the ladies at the windows. 

It is impossible to treat of this period without giving to John 
Adams a place apart. He was in some respects a tragic figure, and, 
though ludicrously vain and often all but clownish in small things, 
we shall have occasion to admire and respect his independence and 
courageous subordination of his personal fortunes to the service of 
humanity and country in making the peace with France. If at 
times the mere recitation of his personal weaknesses seems like 
ill-natured ridicule, it should be borne in mind that this is neces- 
sary to the explanation of why a statesman and patriot, so able 
and deserving, was so unfortunate in his public career. 


Vill PREFACE 


The purpose of the author is not to make out a case for or 
against democracy, but to show how it came to the Republic, 
sometimes blundering and making a fool of itself on the way; 
to re-create, if possible, an heroic, picturesque, and lusty age; to 
make the men of the steel engravings flesh and blood; to stage the 
drama of a day when real giants trod the boards. 

Cuiaupe G. Bowsers 


CONTENTS 


J. Days or ComEepy 


A depressing dawn — Pessimism of Ames and Madison — Petty jealousies and 
ambitions — Federal Hall — Caliber of Congress — Adams’s triumphant entry — 
His elation — Form and titles — ‘Majesty’ or ‘Excellency’? — Adams scorns 
‘President’ — ‘What shall I be?’ — Maclay’s amusement — Ellsworth puzzled 
— ‘How shall I behave?’ — Carroll’s disgust — Debate on titles — Maclay’s ire 
reverence — Fenno’s plea for titles — Washington’s arrival and reception — 
Scene at the inauguration — The inaugural ball — New York in 1789 — Streets, 
lights, sanitation — Homes of celebrities — Auction block and gallows — Funeral 
bells — Tea-gardens — Taverns — Theater — Washington at the play — Maclay 
shocked — The wax-works — Social climbers — Cost of living — Luxury of society 
—Its Tory tone— Ball at the French Minister’s — The Court on Cherry 
Street — Snobbery and pretense — The Hamiltons entertain — The dinners of the 
Pennsylvanians — Robert Morris’s stories — The Wall Street promenade — The 
House of Gossip — Richmond Hill — Washington’s dinners — Madison seeks 
revenue — Trickery of the merchants — Enter the ‘moneyed class’ — Power of 
removal — Washington and the Senate — Hamilton’s appointment. | 


TI. Hamruton: A Portrarr 


Appearance — Elegance — Mystery of origin — Precocity —In Santa Cruz— . 
Early ambition — At King’s College — Literary brilliancy — His eloquence — 
Was he a military genius? — His aristocracy — Love of luxury — Government by 
‘gentlemen’ — Respect for wealth — Contempt for democracy — Preference for 
monarchy — His plan for a Constitution — Distrust of the one adopted — Never 
reconciled — Work for its adoption — His genius analyzed — Methods of work — 
Fighting qualities — Moral courage — Personal integrity — Analysis of his 
strength and weakness — As a party leader — Lovable traits — His conviviality _ 
— Fondness for women — His home life — Attitude toward religion — Toward © 
Washington. 


III. Hamiiton IN THE SADDLE 


Confidence in Hamilton in commercial circles — Report on Public Credit — Reason | 
not personally presented — Scene when read — Reactions of a radical — Enthusi- © 
asm in commercial quarters — The discords — Hate of speculators — ‘In the ine © 
terest of the rich’ — Plan to bind moneyed class — Activity of speculators — | 
Public men involved — Rumors of Robert Morris — Fast-sailing vessels — The 
gambling mania — Fenno defends speculators — The debate on Funding — Gal- 
lery scenes — Jackson’s attack — Hamilton turns lobbyist — Organizes his forces 
— Newspaper attacks — Portrait of Madison — He proposes discrimination — 
Consternation — Gloom at the Knox dinner — Hamiltonians attack — The de- 
bate — Sedgwick — Smith — Ames — The gallery — Madison replies — Mac- 
lay’s plan — An old roué— Madison’s snub — Discrimination voted down — 
Abuse of Madison — Reaction in the streets — Assumption — A caucus of Hamil- 
tonians — Robert Morris’s interest — Opposition appears — Revolt of Southern- 
ers — The cause — Annihilation of States — Wolcott reveals Hamilton’s motives 
— The debate — Hamiltonians ‘piped to quarters” — Fear of vote — Rumors of 
Vining — Activity of the lobby — Lame and sick carried to House — Morris ap- 
proaches Maclay — Alarm of Hamiltonians — Scenes in the Senate — Assump- 


“a. 


4 CONTENTS 


tion voted down — Distress of Sedgwick, Wadsworth, Clymer, Fitzsimons —= 
Scenes in coffee-houses — Hamiltonian Senate on a strike — Threats of disunion 
— Press comments — ‘Bastard of Eastern speculators’ — Jefferson reaches New 
York — Hamilton tries bargaining — Early morning walk on the Battery — Ham- 
ilton and Jefferson barter — Dinner at Jefferson’s — Madison agrees — Assump- 
tion wins. 


IV. PREMONITIONS OF BATTLE 


Hamilton at high tide — Idol of business — Masterful manner in Cabinet — New 
fortunes and class feeling — Hamilton’s excise — Welcomes test of strength — 
Distillers aroused — Pennsylvania protests — Neutrality of Jefferson and Madi- 
son — Street debates — House debate — Denunciations of Jackson — Madison’s 
embarrassment — Liquor and morals — Giles approves — Revenue agents in elec-, 
tions — Hamilton takes personal charge in Senate — Meets with committee ~ 


69 


Maclay’s rebuff — ‘Hamilton fails in nothing’ — Bloodshed predicted — The Na= _ 


tional Bank — Hamilton’s powerful following — Maclay notes drift of moneyed 
men — Debate in House — Madison attacks monopoly and implied powers — 
Ames defends — Sectional significance of vote — Fight in the Cabinet — Madison 
consulted by Washington — Asked to reduce views to writing — Fear of veto — 
Ames explains Washington’s hesitation — Ugly talk in New York — Hamilton 
and Jefferson break — The battle of the press — Hamilton man of the hour — 
Given reception in New York — Jefferson and Madison on a journey — Their in- 
timacy — Their association in the public mind — Significance of their journey — 
Pamphlet duel of Burke and Paine — ‘Rights of Man’ and Adams’s ‘Discourses of 
Davilla’ — Jefferson’s ‘preface’ to Paine’s pamphlet — Reference to Adams — 
British Agent shocked — Also ‘Society’ — Press joins the fray — Burke versus 
Paine in country towns — Adams disgusted with Paine — Enraged by Jefferson — 
J. Q. Adams attacks Jefferson and Paine — Defends English institutions — The 
war in the press — Turmoil pleases Jefferson — Embarrassed by the ‘preface’ — 
Explains to Adams — Friends of democracy aroused — Scandal of ‘scrippomony’ 
— Swindlers’ harvest — Frenzy of speculation — Press warns — Political phase —= 
Scandal in choice of Bank directors — Hamilton’s brilliant support. 


V. Tuomas Jerrerson: A PortRAItT 


Appearance — A woman’s impressions — His cold first look — Charm of manner 
— Maclay’s impressions — His conversation — His frontier training — Westerner 
with Eastern polish — Bred in democratic community — College influences — 
Fights for democracy in Virginia — Associations in Paris — Life there — Interest 
in peasants’ plight — Sympathy with dawning of French Revolution — Chats with 
Gouverneur Morris — Consulted by leaders of Revolution — His plan to save the 
monarchy — His humanity — Toward Hessian prisoners — Against death penalty 
for minor offences — Against degrading prisoners — Relations with servants — 
With slaves — Hostility to slavery — Attitude toward religion — Toward the 
Constitution — Methods as party leader — His tact — Persuasions of dinner table 
— Dislike of quarrels and separations — Self-control — Justly estimates oppo= 
nent’s strength — Relations with Adams — His cunning — The art of mining — 
Practical political methods — Serenity in storms — The artistic phase — Music — 
Architecture — The scientific phase — Interest in natural history — Astronomy 
— Inventions — Passion for agriculture — Life at Monticello. 


VI. Tre Soctat BackGROUND 


Complaints of Philadelphia prices and manners — The physical city — Streets and 
gardens — Halls of Congress — Offices of Jefferson, Hamilton, and Washingtcn — 
Life in the taverns — In boarding-houses — Drinking-places — Arragance of the 


92 


116 


CONTENTS x] 


masses — Their social life — Public gardens — Streets by night — Shops and 
shopping — Economic status of workers — The aristocracy — Vanity of wealth — 
“Elegance of dress’ — Entertaining — Heavy drinking — Risqués conversations 
— Burr’s wine — A dinner at Clymer’s — Hamilton and Mrs. Church — Portrait 
of Mrs. Bingham — The Bingham mansion — Mrs. Bingham’s hectic life — Mon- 
roe’s socia] blunder — Judge Chase’s boorishness — A reception at Mrs. Bingham’s 
— The Morrises — Mrs. Walter Stewart — Mrs. Samuel Powell — Mrs. Knox — 
Mrs. Hamilton — Mrs. Wolcott — Mary Ann Wolcott — Pierce Butler — Mrs. 
William Jackson — Foreign visitors — A scene at the British Legation — Country 
places — The hunt — Dancing Assembly — The theater — Washington at the 
play — The players — The circus — Home of Jefferson. 


VIL. Jerrerson Mosiiizss 140 


Hamilton’s advantage in organization — Jefferson’s raw material — His problem 
— The scattered masses — The disfranchised — Jefferson plans amalgamation of 
local democratic groups — Busy with his pen — Hancock and Sam Adams — 
Charles Jarvis— Ben Austin — Abraham Bishop — Politics in Connecticut — 
Gideon Granger — Ephraim Kirby — John Langdon — Matthew Lyon — George 
Clinton — The Livingstons — Aaron Burr — Jefferson approaches Burr — Tam- 
many — Jeffersonian leaders in Pennsylvania — John Francis Mercer — The Vir- 
ginia machine — Willie Jones of Halifax — Nathaniel Macon — Timothy Blood- 
worth — James Jackson of Georgia — Charles Pinckney — Jefferson’s iron discip- 
line — He works on the masses — Aristocrats shocked at his associations — Uses 
the press — John Fenno — His relations with Federalist leaders — Launching of 
Freneau’s paper — Its national appeal — Portrait of Freneau. 


VII. Tuer GAGE or BATTLE 161 


Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures — Its reception — Hamilton’s plan for facto- 
ries at Passaic Falls — Appears before New Jersey Legislature for charter — Visits 
site to select locations — Pamphlet attacks on his Passaic project — Admirers sub- 
scribe for Trumbull portrait of him — He watches Freneau’s paper — Its early 
tone — ‘Brutus’ attacks funding system — Attacks on Freneau’s paper — ‘Work 
of foreigners’ — Of a ‘junto’ — ‘Sidney’ assails Hamilton and his policies — 
Other assaults in Freneau’s paper — Fenno to the defense — Demolished by Fren- 
eau — Scene at the Morris house — The rivals visit a factory — Washington’s 
hope for reconciliation — Fenno regrets lack of King — Fenno versus Freneau — 
Fenno again crushed — Hamilton’s rage — His ‘T.L.’ letter — Freneau’s reply — 
Hamilton’s anonymous attacks on Jefferson — Seeks affadavit from Boudinot — 
Washington appeals for peace — Hamilton’s reply — Jefferson’s — Hamilton con- 
tinues — Madison attacks Hamilton’s letter — Fenno fears duels — Jefferson 
holds aloof — Attack postpones his plans to retire — ‘It is a Fact’ — Collapse of 
St. Clair’s expedition — Jeffersonians attack Knox — Bubble of speculaticm bursts 
— Press denounces the gamblers — The Duer failure — Business paralyzed — 
Charged to funding system — The Clinton-Jay contest — Bitter campaign of 1792 
— Federalist pessimism — Maryland fight— Hamilton involved—In North 
Carolina —In Kentucky —In Virginia — Hamilton’s cultivation of Virginia 
Federalists — Adams opposed — Hamilton to the rescue — Carroll for Vice- 
President — McHenry’s letter — Hamilton orders Adams to his post — Press bat- 
tle over Adams — Results. 


LX. Haminton’s Buack WINTER 185 


A remarkable winter — Jeffersonians aggressive — Hamilton’s methods chal- 
lenged — Madison demands report on finances — Hints of corruption — Threats 
of Duer — Blackmail of Reynolds — Explanation asked of Hamilton — Scene in 


xi CONTENTS 


Hamilton’s office — In his home — His confession concerning Mrs. Reynolds — 
Jeffersonians attack finances — Fight planned at Jefferson’s — Portrait of Giles — 
Freneau creates atmosphere for assault — First Giles Resolutions — Giles’s 
speech — Hamilton’s indignation — His candle-lit office — His prodigious achieve- 
ment — His friends’ enthusiasm — Criticism of his enemies — Technical violation 
of law — Giles resolution of condemnation — The political strategy — The caucus 
at Hamilton’s — The debate — The night session — Madison sums up — Ames res 
plies — The vindication — Reactions of the press — Toast at Providence Society 
dinner — Jeffersonians analyze the vote — ‘Parties to the cause’ — Jefferson 
finds bank directors and speculators did it — A conference at Port Royal — John 
Taylor’s pamphlet — End of the fiscal phase. ? 


X. Ca Ira » OOF - 


The French Revolution — Its appeal to American democrats — A wave of enthusi- 
asm — At Baltimore — At Boston — At Charleston — Political significance of the 
Revolution to America — Americans divide on issue of democracy — Federalists 
opposed — Their action in the Senate — Denunciations of France — Federalist 
scorn for Louis’s weakness — Jefferson’s attitude — His instructions to Ministers 
— Hamiltonians capitalize execution of King — ‘Cato’ revived in Philadelphia — 
‘Capet has lost his Caput’ — Sorrow at Providence — ‘Cordelia’ urges black rose 
for mourning — Tide turns against the French — Jefferson’s disgust — Society 
mourns — Jefferson and Madison on right to execute — George III joins coalition 
— ‘Monarchy versus Democracy’ — Masses swing back to France — Under the 
Bingham windows — Bitterness against England — Hamilton’s alarm — Sum- 
mons Washington from Mount Vernon — Hamilton’s misrepresentation of Eng- 
land’s action — He usurps Jefferson’s functions — Prepares questions for Cabinet 
council — Cabinet struggle — Neutrality Proclamation — Madison’s anger — 
Protests of the streets — Genét — His ovations — Jefferson and Madison pleased 
— Hamiltonians plan cool reception in Philadelphia — Popular protests — False 
report on Count de Noailles— Hysterical reception —- Washington cold — Press 
attacks Neutrality — A French craze — Mobs march — The provocations — 
Scenes in theaters — Federalists mock — Democratic clubs — Their political sig- 
nificance — How Neutrality fared — Genét’s madness — English outrages — 
“Red Coats’ toasted — ‘Pacifist’ — Jefferson orders Madison to reply — Attacks 
on Hamilton — The ‘Little Sarah’ — Jefferson and Genét — Reactions against 
French — Madison meets it — Cabinet confers on Genét — Jefferson demands his 
recall — Society pro-English — Party bitterness — Jefferson’s social ostracism — 
He resigns — Washington’s efforts to dissuade him — A near duel — A scare in 
Boston — Yellow fever in Philadelphia — Hamilton stricken — Jefferson’s Report 
on Commerce — A party document — He retires to Monticello, ' 


XI. Hectic Days 240 


\ Madison’s Commercial Resolutions — Their political purpose — English party 
aroused — Hamilton speaks by proxy — Madison avows retaliation — The de- 
bate — Ames’s unfortunate speech — Arraignment of English outrages and de= 
fense — ‘An English agent here’ — Press attacks on Madison — Jeffersonians 
call town meetings — At Boston — At New York — At Philadelphia — At Ports- 
mouth — Ames and Smith hung in efigy — Vogue of Smith’s speech in London — 
Hammond an English Genét — British Orders in Council — Seizure of American 
vessels — Retaliatory measures — Hamiltonians plead for calmness — A mercen- 
ary patriot — English Minister insulted — Jeffersonian press fans the flames — 
French outrage in Charleston — Clamor for war — Hamiltonians plead for negoti- 
ations — Prefer Hamilton to negotiate — His intimacy with British Minister and 
Agent — ‘No. 7’ — Protests against Hamilton — A Federalist caucus — Hamil- 


CONTENTS xii 


ton selected — Veer to Jay — His personality and character — His fatal admis- 
sion — Fight against his confirmation — Popular protests — Hamiltonian caucus 
prepares Jay’s instructions — He sails — The ‘ Whiskey Boys’ — Their grievances 
— Insurrection — Political phase — Hamilton welcomes military measures — 
Demanding a law’s repeal is urging its violation — Attacks on Democratic Societies 
— Their position — That of the Jeffersonian press — Hamilton goes to war — 
“Why Hamilton?’ — ‘Where is Knox?’ — Hamilton plans a political effect — Crus 
elty to prisoners — The chariot wheels of the conqueror — East versus the frontier 
— Elections of 1794 — Ames’s close call — Livingston’s triumph — Gives Ames 
the ‘hypo’ —In North Carolina — Fitzsimons defeated — Jefferson’s summer 
— Dr. Priestley arrives — Cobbett’s attack — Life in Philadelphia — Theater 
mobs — Washington attacks Democratic Societies — Madison meets and defeats 
approval in House — The bitter debate — The press battle — Foreshadowings of 
Alien and Sedition Laws. 


XII. Taz Marcuina Mors) 266 


Hamilton resigns — Fenno’s tribute — Bache’s comment — Madison’s — Hamil- 
ton given dinner in Philadelphia — In New York — Greenleaf on the banquet — 
Jay’s negotiations — Hamilton’s indiscretion — Jay’s treaty — Hamilton’s dis- 
gust — Jefferson’s — Why Hamilton would not reject — His reservations — Sen- 
ate debates in secret — Withholds treaty from publication — Hamilton doubts 
wisdom — Senator Mason — He gives treaty to press — Bache’s comments on the 
secrecy — Mob at Goldbury’s wharf — Philadelphia mob on the 4th — Jay burned 
in effigy — Dinner on Frankfort Creek — Protest meeting in State House yard — 
‘Kick it to hell’ — Rival dinners in New York — Letter to ‘Sir John Jay’ — Bos- 
ton mobs — Charleston mob — Rutledge denounces treaty — Mass meeting at 
Richmond — Portsmouth mass meeting — Dinner to Langdon — In Vermont — 
In Connecticut — In Rhode Island — In Delaware — Jay burned in effigy in 
Georgia — Street brawls — Tavern quarrels — Washington’s hesitation — Cabot 
anxious — Ellsworth disgusted — Randolph scandal — Washington signs treaty 
— Appeals to Washington to make public plea — Bache attacks him — Hamilton 
writes ‘Camillus’ — Trouble with editor — British outrages continue — Jeffers 
_Sonians use them — Jefferson asks Madison to reply to Hamilton, 


XIII. Tue Drama or ’96 289 


Senate rejects Rutledge — Jefferson’s comment — Edward Livingston — Portrait 
of Albert Gallatin — The Livingston Resolution — A constitutional question — 
The debate — Cobbett’s offensive action — Gallatin’s speech — Sedgwick’s sneer 
at the -people — Resolutions adopted — Hamilton’s concern — His advice to 
Washington — Fight on appropriations for treaty — Disunion threats — Jefferson 
and Madison on Washington’s action — ‘Still in leading-strings’ — Organizing 
outside sentiment during debate — Insurance companies enter politics — Banks 
also — Boston mass meeting — Otis’s sneer at Gallatin — Abuse of Gallatin — In- 
timidation — Federalist alarm — Portrait of Fisher Ames — His physical col- 
lapse — The invalid’s slow journey to the capital — Warrior borne on a stretcher 
— His sensational speech — Hamiltonians’ delight — ‘In the hands of Pitt’ — 
The vote — The effect — Jefferson during treaty fight — His health — The Maz- 
zei letter — Presidential election — Patrick Henry sounded by Hamiltonians — 
They choose Pinckney — Thomas Pinckney — Adams versus Jefferson — Scur- 
rility — Adet’s letter— Hamilton’s scheme against Adams — His dislike of 
Adams — Adams or secession — The results — Hamiltonian distrust of Jefferson 
as Vice-President — Jefferson cultivates Adams — The undelivered letter — Jef- 
fersonian press complimentary to Adams — Federalist displeasure. 


XIV CONTENTS 


XIV. An Inconaruovus Portrait GALLERY $15 


A treacherous Cabinet — Portrait of John Adams — Of Timothy Pickering — Of 
Oliver Wolcott — Of James McHenry. 


XV. ComEepy AND Heroics 839 


The crisis with France — Portrait of Gouverneur Morris — Compared with Mon- 
roe — Monroe’s difficulties in Paris — Federalist intrigue against him — Ignored 
by Pickering — Deceived by Jay — French indignation over Jay’s treaty — 
Monroe’s recall — Pinckney refused — Hamilton proposes a mission — Suggests 
Madison as one — War party’s opposition — Hamilton prevails — Adams’s ob- 
jections to Jefferson for the mission — He confers with Jefferson — Latter dis- . 
courages sending Madison— Ames proposes Cabot — Adams names Gerry — 
Thinks Hamilton ‘in a delirium’ — Adams’s Message — Harrison Gray Otis — | 
Robert Goodloe Harper — Debate on Reply to the Message — Livingston attacks 
English party — Harper’s war speech — It is popular in London — British Minis- ; 
ter conspicuous on floor — Taps Harper on shoulder — Dayton’s compromise — | 
War party attacks him — Lyon shocks the formalists — Is attacked — His hot 
reply — ‘Porcupine’ assails him — Mass attack on Jefferson — His silence — Lu- 
ther Martin attacks him — Is insulted at Harvard — ‘ Porcupine’s’ abuse — Jeffer= 
son drops society — English party jeers memory of Franklin — Hisses Paine —. 
First toast to Women’s Rights — Abuse of Swanwick — Of Mrs. M’Lean — Of 
Giles — Press comments on Hamilton’s Reynolds pamphlet — Brilliant social seae 
son for Federalists — Scene at Adams’s dinner table — Porcupine’s Gazette — 
William Cobbett — Rival banquets — Discourtesy to Monroe — Dinner in his | 
honor — He confers with party leaders — Gallatin’s conclusions — Lyon-Gris- 
wold fight — Press comments. 


XVI. HystTERIcs 862 


Hamiltonians bent on war — Hamilton runs the government — Bitterness of de- 
bates — Harper’s wild war speech — Petitions against arming ships — Adams’s 
‘insane message’ — Hamilton in the wings— Sprigg Resolution — Harper’s 
blunder — X Y Z papers— Partisan abuse — Jefferson disheartened — War 
clouds lower — Jefferson’s view of X Y Z— Madison’s — Monroe’s — War hy- 
steria — Adams greets young warriors of capital — A drunken mob — Attack on 
Bache’s house — Adams alarmed — The ‘terror’ of Fast Day — ‘Hail Columbia’ 
— Resented by Jeffersonians — Author rewarded — War hawks beat tom-toms —~ 
Hamilton urges Washington to stir the country — Ames demands war at once — 
Return of Marshall — His ovation— Partisan purpose — Capitalization of 
Pinckney’s return — Hamilton writes philippics against France — Jefferson asks 
Madison to reply — ‘Porcupine’s’ war propaganda — War party keeps presses busy , 
with Harper’s speech — Other war pamphlets — Clergy joins war hawks — ‘Why 
so much anger in the heart of a divine?’ — Terrorizing Jeffersonians — Jefferson 
ready — Bache assaulted — Hamilton goes gasconading — His amazing letter — 
Democrats fight for time — Jefferson insulted — Ostracized — Spied upon — 
Mail opened — Abusive toasts — Persecution of Lyon — Of Livingston — Of a 
Boston editor — The Alien Law — Hatred of the Irish — Political reason — Jef- 
fersonians and English Whigs versus Hamiltonians and Pitt — Hamiltonians and 
Irish Rebellion — King’s part — Otis’s ‘wild Irish’ speech — Sedition laws pro- 
posed — Hamilton shocked at original bill — Mobbing Democrats in debate — 
Livingston’ s speech on Alien Bill — Wild talk in Sedition Bill debate — Yellow 
fever again — Dr. Rush — Death of Fenno — Of Bache — Elections of ’98 — 
| Washington an active and extreme partisan — Marshall's campaign — Opposes 
Alien and Sedition Laws — ‘Porcupine’s’ comment — Reign of Terror begins ~— 
College degrees for Federalists — ‘Patriot’ tnobs —_ Jeffersonians discharged from. 
yobs — A Bishop’s sermon, ~ 


CONTENTS 


XVII. Tue Reien or Terror 
_ Arrest of Matthew Lyon — A ludicrous trial — Cruel treatment — Loathsome 


cell — Protest of Green Mountain Boys — Lyon in jail elected to Congress — 
Plans to rearrest him — His fine subscribed — Dramatic scene on release — Ova- 
tions en route to Congress — Persecution of the Reverend J. C. Ogden — Impris- 
oned — Assaulted by soldiers — Arrest of Anthony Haswell — His offense — 
Brutal treatment — Trial — Ovation on release — Case of David Brown — The 
comedy case of Richard Fairbanks — Ames’s plea — Persecution of Adams of the 


Chronicle — Resentment of public — Trial — Dana’s bitter charge — Adams in . 


jail — Visited by Sam Adams — William Duane — The Saint Mary’s Church 


‘riot’ — Arrest — Trial — Dallas excoriation — Acquittal — Rearrest — Case of 


Thomas Cooper — Chase on the bench — His conduct — Cooper imprisoned — 
Refuses pardon — Dinner on release — The Callender case — Chase’s boast — 
His conduct — Lawyers refuse to proceed — Case of Judge Peck — Public senti- 
ment aroused — Political effect — Case of Charles Holt — The list of victims — 
Use of Alien Law — Case of John D. Burk — Of Moreau de Saint Merys — Toast- 


_ ing Alien and Sedition Laws — Harper’s jeer — Mass meetings demanding repeal 


— Congressional speakers for repeal mobbed — A conference at Monticello — Por- 
trait of John Breckenridge — Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions — As viewed at 
the time — Answers of Legislatures — Fight in Massachusetts — By Senator John 


~ 


Bacon — And Aaron Hill — Abuse of Bacon — Stoning of Hill’s house — Porcu- . 


pine preaches right of secession. 


XVIII. Apams Putts Down THE PILLARS 


‘Hamilton’s war’ — Hamilton for commander — Adams’s veto — Cabinet con- 
spired for Hamilton against Adams — McHenry’s trip to Mount Vernon — The 


- trick turned — Adams’s revolt — Hamilton’s activities — Wolcott’s — The Essex 


Junto’s — Working on Washington — His letter to Adams — Latter’s retort — 
Exclusion of Jeffersonians from commissions — Washington in accord — Hamil- 
ton’s charge — Adams overruled on Burr — And Muhlenberg — Moderate Feder- 
alists protest extremes — Jeffersonian sarcasm — Hamilton organizes for war — 
His difficulties — Scolds McHenry — Decline of war spirit — Jefferson fears in- 
surrection over taxes — eight per cent interest — ‘Damned army will ruin the 
country’ — Jeffersonians capitalize eight per cent — Fries Rebellion — Hamilton 
in Philadelphia — Soldier outrages — On Jacob Schneider — On Duane — ‘ Por- 


- cupine’s’ delight — Militarism rampant — Recruiting lags — Clergy to the rescue 


— Attempt to revive war fever — Army for domestic purposes — Desertions — 
Discussions on executions — Logan goes to Paris — Federalist alarm — War un- 
necessary — Why Otis knew it — Cries of ‘treason’ — Logan learns French wish 
peace — Snubbed by Pickering — By Washington — The Logan Law — Jeffer- 
sonians fight — Harper exposed — Case of Gerry — The Miranda conspiracy — 
Hamilton’s part — His plan to wipe out the States — Adams consults Cabinet on 
negotiations — Is ignored — Conspirators frame Message — Adams’s amendment 
— Hamiltonians caucus to force declaration of war — Defeated — Pickering sulks 
— Adams nominates an envoy — Enemies caucus — Committee calls — Porcu- 
pine attacks — Retreats — Compromise on mission — Some Hamiltonian letters 
— An Adams dinner — Procrastination — Working on Adams — Cabot calls — 
Adams’s summer — Adams at Trenton — Talks with Hamilton — With Ells- 


worth — A Cabinet meeting — Envoys sail — Rage of Hamiltonians — Dreary | 


winter in Philadelphia — Marie Bingham’s escapade. , 


XIX. ‘Tur Graves or WRATH’ 


Enter John Marshall — The Ross Bill — Withheld from public — Duane gets and 
prints it — Protests — Marshall’s disaffection — Working on Marshall — He 


386 


412 


440 


xvi CONTENTS 


wrecks the bill in the House — What Jefferson had done — His platform — Jeffer- 
sonian leaders in South Carolina — ‘Rye House Plot’ — Jefferson at home — 
New York election — Aaron Burr — Compared with Hamilton — Hamilton takes 
charge — His plan — His caucus and ticket — Burr’s system of espionage — His 
personal machine — Tammany — Caucuses at his home — Plans Assembly ticket 
of national figures — Labors with Gates, Clinton, and Livingston — Wins consent 
— Shock to Hamilton — Attacks on Clinton and Gates — Merchants mobilized — 
Burr organizes — His brilliant work — Campaigning with the lowly — The elec- 
tion — Hamilton’s proposal to Jay — Burr for Vice-President — Federalist losses’ 
in New England — Caucus agrees on Adams and C. C. Pinckney — Adams’s rage 
over New York — Scene with McHenry — Pickering dismissed — Hamilton’s let- 
ter to Pickering — His excitement — Reactions of Hamiltonians — They plan de- 
feat of Adams — Adams toasts ‘proscribed patriots’ — An anti-Adams session of 
the Cincinnati — Hamilton’s New England tour — His political purpose — Sees 
Governor Gilman in New Hampshire — Meets rebuff in Rhode Island — A meet-' 
ing of the Essex Junto — At Salem — At Ipswich — At Newburyport — Hamil- 
ton’s unfortunate statement — Jeffersonian ridicule — Hamilton grasps the situa- 
tion. aaeaanlet 


XX. Hamitton’s RAMPAGE 464 


Hamilton plans coercion of Federalist electors — Letter to Carroll — Enemies in 
Adams’s camp — Wolcott’s treachery — Cabot doubtful — Noah Webster deserts 
Hamilton for Adams — Attitude of press — Jeffersonians attack Hamilton — 
Their campaign — The Dayton scandal — ‘Adams a monarchist’ — Langdon’s 
signed statement — Corroboration from New Haven — Webster’s slur at the poor 
— Fenno’s fatal pamphlet — Secession talk of Federalists — Wolcott’s father — | 
Letters of ‘Pelham’ — Those of ‘Burleigh’ — Reply of ‘Rodolphus* — Jefferson- 
ian progress in New England — In Connecticut — Abraham Bishop — His Phi | 
Beta Kappa oration — Political preachers — The Reverend Cotton Smith’s slan- 
der — Jefferson’s comment — The Reverend Dr. Abercrombie — Duane attacks 
— Dr. Lynn electioneers for Pinckney — Rebuked by Jeffersonian woman — Per- 
secution of Jeffersonian clergymen — Pamphlets on Jefferson’s religion — Ridicule 
of Federalists’ religious pose — ‘Diary’ of Fayton — Federalists seek Catholic 
votes — Hamilton plans personal attack on Adams — Seeks aid of Adams’s Cabi- 
net — Writes pamphlet — Burr gets and publishes — Editor of New York Gazette 
explains — Hamilton’s case against Adams — Cabot’s criticism — Major Rus- 
sell’s floundering — Jeffersonian press attacks Hamilton — Pamphlet replies — 
Hamilton eager to answer — Friends dissuade — Election tricks — In Pennsyl- 
vania, 


XXI. Democracy TRIUMPHANT 486 


Washington City — Morris’s cynical description — Mrs. Adams’s — The physical 
town — Lodgings — Social life — Jefferson calls on Adams — His lodgings at 
Conrad’s — Others at Conrad’s — Federalist conspiracy to elect Burr — Hamil- 
ton’s indignation — His attempt to dissuade his party — A drama in letters — 
Morris and Jay join Hamilton — Others desert — Harper calls on Morris — Plan 
to prevent an election — Burr’s aloofness — He hears from Harper — Burr’s letter 
to General Smith — Hamilton wins McHenry — Pickering’s preference for Burr 
— Bayard’s embarrassment — Sedgwick for Burr — Federalist caucus agrees on 
‘Burr — Hamilton makes serious charge — His depression — The serenity at Con- 
rad’s — Jefferson’s non-political letters — Visitors pack the town — Federalist 
press in the contest — Gallatin surveys the field — Jefferson’s secret plan — He 
writes Burr — Writes scientific friends on bones — Hamilton’s final shot at Wol- 
_cott dinner — A Washington snowstorm — Nicholson carried in bed to Capitol — 


CONTENTS xvil 


e 


Scenes during all-night voting — The drama of the struggle — Jefferson during the 
voting — Approached by Morris — Conspirators surrender — Adams notified — 
Jefferson takes leave of Senate — Morris’s resolutions of thanks — The die-hards 
protest — Inaugural crowds — Creating new judges — Adams rewards Wolcott — 
Adams’s flight — Sedgwick’s — Breakfast at Conrad’s — Jefferson sworn in by 
Marshall — ‘All Federalists, all Republicans’ — Mrs. Smith pours tea — Epi- 


logue. 


Booxs, PAMPHLETS, NEWSPAPERS, AND MaGazines CITED OR 
CoNSULTED 513 


INDEX 519 


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ILLUSTRATIONS 


THOMAS JEFFERSON Frontispiece 


From a copy of the Thomas Sully portrait, painted by Nancy Clifton M. Ran- 
dolph, wife of Thomas Jefferson Randolph IV, a lineal descendant of Jefferson 


ALEXANDER HAMILTON 22 
From an engraving by E. Prud’homme after a miniature by Archibald Robertson 


Mrs. Wiiu1AmM BIncHAM 128 


From an engraving in Rufus Wilmot Griswold’s Republican Court after the 
painting by Gilbert Stuart 


Four HAMILroniANs 140 


FisHer AMES 
From a portrait by Gilbert Stuart 


Rosert GoopLtog HARPER 
From a painting 


GEORGE CABOT 


From a woodcut after a pastel of Cabot at the age of sixteen, the only known 
portrait 


GouvVERNEUR Morris 
From an engraving after a portrait by Thomas Sully 


Four JEFFERSONIANS 148 


ALBERT GALLATIN 
From a portrait by Gilbert Stuart 
EDWARD LIVINGSTON 
From an engraving by E. Wellmore after a drawing by J. B. Longacre 


WILLIAM Brancu GILES 
From a miniature painted in Washington in 1812, reproduced in heliotype in 
The Centennial of Washington's Inauguration, by Clarence Winthrop Bowen 


James MApDISON 
From a portrait by Thomas Sully 


FacsmmMiILte oF HAMILTON’s LetteR To Oxtver Woucort APPoINT- 
Inc Him AUDITOR IN THE TREASURY DEPARTMENT 332 


From the original pasted in George Gibbs’s own copy of his Administrations of 
Washington and Adams 


Ture Griswoup-Lyon FicHt In THE HousE 360 
From a contemporary cartoon 


*Map Tom In A RaGr’ 384 


From a contemporary cartoon typical of the Federalist attacks on Jefferson 


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JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 
The Struggle for Democracy in America 


CHAPTER I 
DAYS OF COMEDY 


I 


HEN Fisher Ames, exuberant over his unhorsing of Samuel 

Adams, and eager to try his lance on others, reached New 
York to take his place in the House of Representatives, he was 
disgusted to find few indications that a new government was about 
to be established. Wandering about the narrow, crooked streets 
he encountered few colleagues. That was the beginning of his 
cynicism. 

A week after the date set for the opening of Congress but six 
Senators had appeared, and a circular letter was sent to the others 
urging their immediate attendance. Two weeks more and neither 
House nor Senate could muster a quorum.! Ames could see little 
improvement on the ‘languor of the old Confederation,’ but ex- 
pected an organization of the House within a day or two. A Vir- 
ginian, lingering in Philadelphia with a slight indisposition, was 
expected momentarily and the Representatives from New Jersey 
were on the way. But there was nothing definite on which to base 
such fair hopes of the Senate.2. The next day Madison wrote 
Washington in a similar vein. This seeming indolence or indif- 
ference was the subject of pessimistic conversations among the 
members in town as they meandered about the streets. Revenue 
was being lost — ‘a thousand pounds a day’; credit was going; the 
spirit of the new experiment was sinking. ‘The people will forget 
the new government before it is born,’ wrote Ames. “The resur- 
rection of the infant will come before its birth.’* Already petty 
jealousies and ambitions were manifesting themselves, with much 


1 Pickering (Wingate to Pickering), 11, 447. 
2 Ames, I, 31. 8 Writings, 1, 450. ¢ Ames, I, 31, 32. 


4 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


intriguing for the honor of being messengers to notify the Presi- 
dent and Vice-President of their election.! The little city was 
overrun with job-hunters. Even before the gavel fell on the first 
session, there were discussions of removing the capital elsewhere 
because of ‘the unreasonable expense of living,’ in New York. 

It was not until April 2d, almost a month late, that a quorum 
was formed in the two houses. The following day George Wash- 
ington was elected President, John Adams Vice-President, and 
messengers started for Mount Vernon and Braintree. Confronted 
by the most momentous governmental task in history, the men on 
whom fell the burden of creating a new nation had consulted their 
personal convenience about starting. It was not a promising be- 
ginning. 


II : 


If the lawmakers had been derelict, the people of New York had 
not. They at least appreciated the possibilities of a capital. The 
task of designing Federal Hall in which Congress was to meet had 
been entrusted to L’Enfant — who was to win undying fame by 
planning the city of Washington—and he had done his work well 
— some thought too well. Ames was rather delighted over the 
fact that it had cost ‘20,000 pounds York money,’ but Ames was a 
lover of luxury, and the more democratic Wingate, while conced- 
ing that the city had ‘exerted itself mightily,’ was afraid it had 
done so ‘excessively.’? In truth there was dignity and beauty in 
the stately arches and the Doric columns, in the lofty vestibule 
paved with marble and lighted from an ornate dome, in the design 
and decorations of the chambers, with their graceful pilasters and 
their crimson draperies. There was richness enough to disturb 
the republican souls of members from the rural districts and the 
small towns.? Among the members who sat down amidst these 
surroundings were a number who were nationally known and bril- 
liant, but the majority were comparatively obscure and mediocre. 
Looking over his colleagues, the enthusiastic and impressionable 
Ames found himself ‘less awed and terrified’ than he had expected; 
for while it was ‘quite a republican assembly’ because ‘it looks 


1 Pickering (Wingate to Pickering), 11, 447. 2 Ames, 1, 31; Pickering, u, 447, 
* Republican Court, 120-22; Story of a Street, 101. 


DAYS OF COMEDY 3 


like one,’ he could see few ‘shining geniuses.”! To the more ex- 
perienced Madison, the outlook was not so pleasing. ‘I see on the 
list of Representatives a very scanty proportion who will share in 
the drudgery of business,’ he wrote.” 


III 


After a triumphant journey, constantly interrupted by ovations 
and addresses, by the thunder of artillery, the clatter of cavalry, 
and the ringing of bells, John Adams reached the city, took his 
seat beneath the canopy of crimson velvet in the Senate and began 
his reign. The ceremony and adulation of his progress from Brain- 
tree had gone to his head. Almost immediately he began to mimic 
the manners and parrot the language of the Old World court 
circles, until even the aristocratic Ames was moved to regret his 
‘long absence’ from the country because of which he had ‘not so 
clear an idea of the temper of the people as others who have not 
half his knowledge in other matters.’ 

With the approach of Washington, the Senate, partly under the 
inspiration of Adams, began to grapple soberly with the problem 
of form and titles. Even before the arrival of Adams, when every 
ene was ‘busy in collecting flowers and sweets... to amuse and 
delight the President ... on his arrival,’ the prosaic Roger Sher- 
man had ‘set his head to work to devise some style of address 
more novel and dignified than “Excellency.”’ There was an 
ominous growl from the skeptics who doubted the propriety, and 
some ribald laughter from the wits. A caricature had even ap- 
peared under the caption ‘The Entry,’ representing the President 
on an ass, and in the arms of his man Billy Humphreys, who was 
shouting hosannas and birthday odes, while the Devil looked on 
with the comment: 

‘The glorious time has come to pass 
When David shall conduct an ass.’ 4 

It was to require more heroic treatment than this, however, to 
cool the senatorial ardor for high-sounding names. Even before 
Adams had been elected, he had participated in serious discussions 
in Boston as to whether the President should be called ‘Majesty,’ 
or ‘Excellency,’ or nothing at all. Of course the Senators and Re- 


1 Ames, 1, 32-34. 2 Writings, 1, 450. % Ames (to Minot), 1, 41-42, 
{ Republican Court, 122, note. 


4 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


presentatives should be given the honest English title of ‘Most 
Honorable,’ for Major Russell in the ‘Centinel’ had been doing 
that all along. But the time for decision had come. The President 
was approaching. It had been decided that on his arrival at the 
Senate Chamber for his inauguration, he was to be met at the door 
by Adams, conducted to a chair, and informed that both houses 
were ready to attend him when he took the oath. But how should 
he be addressed? Should it be as ‘Mr. Washington,’ ‘Mr. Presi- 
dent,’ ‘Sir,’ ‘May it please your Excellency,’ or what? Adams 
took his troubles to the Senate. Should it be as ‘Excellency,’ as in 
the army? Adams was free to admit that he preferred it to ‘Mr. 
President,’ which ‘would put him on a level with the Governor of 
Bermuda.’ 

There were Senators who instantly caught the importance of 
the point. One proposed the appointment of a committee to 
determine.! But these troubles came, not singly, but in battalions. 
What was Mr. Adams to do when Washington was in the Cham- 
ber? He did not know whether the framers of the Constitution 
‘had in view the two Kings of Sparta or the two Consuls of Rome 
when they formed it.” He could not tell whether the architect of 
the building, in making his chair wide enough for two, had the 
Constitution before him. He was Vice-President — but he was 
also President of the Senate. ‘When the President comes into the 
Senate, what shall I be?’ he asked plaintively. ‘I cannot be Presi- 
dent then. I wish gentlemen to think what I shall be.’ 

It was a solemn moment. Adams, with an air of distress, sank 
into his chair. The silence was depressing. The leveler from the 
frontier of Pennsylvania, Maclay, found ‘the profane muscles of 
his face in tune for laughter,’ but controlled himself. Ellsworth, a 
practical man, was seen feverishly turning the pages of the funda- 
mental law. At length he rose to announce the result of his re- 
search. It was clear enough that wherever the Senate was, ‘there, 
sir, you must be at the head of them.’ But — ‘here he looked 
aghast as if some tremendous gulf yawned before him’ — but 
‘further, sir, I shall not pretend to say.’ ? 

Thus the great day arrived to find the Senate caught unawares 
by a new crisis. Adams had just risen to explain that Washington 
would probably address the Congress, and to ask instructions as to 

1 Adams’s explanation, Works, vim, 511-13, 2 Maclay, 2-3. 


DAYS OF COMEDY 5 


‘how I shall behave.’ It was a congenial subject for discussion. 
Lee of Virginia rose to explain the ways of the Lords and the Com- 
mons. Izard of South Carolina, who had been educated abroad 
and wished it understood, told how often he had been in the Houses 
of Parliament. Lee had observed that, while the Lords sat, the 
Commons stood. True, admitted Izard, but there were no seats 
for the Commons. Adams here interrupted to tell the Senate how 
often he too had been in Parliament. Old Carroll of Carrollton, 
who lived like a lord, but did not think like one, grumblingly sug- 
gested that it did not matter what the English did. 

And just then — consternation! The Clerk of the House was 
at the door! How should he be received? The discussion was 
feverishly resumed. Lee, getting his cue from the Commons 
again, was sure that he should be met at the door by the Sergeant- 
at-Arms with his mace on his shoulder. Confusion worse con- 
founded — the Speaker and members of the House were now at 
the door! Members left their seats in their embarrassment, the 
doors were opened, the House filed in. Some one had blundered!? 

Meanwhile, with increased animation, the debate over the title 
for the President was resumed. Of course there should be titles, 
said Lee. Venice, Genoa, Greece, Rome — all had them. Ells- 
worth began to find virtue in kings; Izard was impressed with the 
antiquity of kingly government. Old Carroll, grumbling — or 
laughing — as usual, did not care for kings. But the President’s 
title — what should it be? Ellsworth thought ‘President’ com- 
mon. Adams eagerly added that there were ‘presidents of fire 
companies and cricket clubs.’ ‘Excellency?’ — suggested by 
Izard. ‘Highness?’ — proposed by Lee. ‘Elective Highness?’? 

At length it was settled — ‘His Highness the President of the 
United States and Protector of the Rights of the Same.’ Adams 
was disgusted. ‘What will the common people of foreign coun- 
tries; what will the soldiers and sailors say to ‘‘George Washington, 
President of the United States”? They will despise him to all 
eternity.’ 

The rabid republicans began to laugh. Speaker Muhlenberg 
dubbed Maclay, ‘Your Highness of the Senate.’ Maclay himself, 
usually sardonic, grew facetious in debate, and thought the title 
satisfactory if the President was really high ‘and gloriously greased 

1 Maclay, 7-10. 2 Ibid., 22-24, 8 Ibid., 25-27. 


6 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


with a great horn of oil’ to make him conspicuous. Even Robert 
Morris complained that the Congress was also ‘Protector of the 
Rights of the People.’! But alas, it was a case of love’s labor lost, 
for when the ponderous title reached the House, James Madison 
quietly announced that the Constitution had given the head of the 
State a title — ‘President of the United States’; and so it has been 
from that day to this. 

The more thoughtful had witnessed the tempest in a teapot with 
some misgivings. Madison thought the success of the Senate plan 
would have ‘given a deep wound to our infant Government’;? 
and Ames thought it ‘a very foolish thing to risk much to secure’ 
and wished ‘that Mr. Adams had been less disguised.’* But they 
who continued for twelve years to refer to ‘the court’ were not 
content. A correspondent of Fenno’s ‘Gazette,’ the ‘court journal,’ 
continued to plead for ‘titles of distinction’ and to pray piously 
that Congress would ‘not leave the important subject to chance, 
to whim, caprice, or accident.’ 4 


IV 


In the midst of these acrimonious discussions of the flubdubbery 
of ceremonials, and with Adams proposing that the Sergeant-at- 
Arms be called ‘Usher of the Black Rod,’® Washington reached 
New York. A black mass of humanity awaited him in the rain at 
the water-front, peered down upon him from roofs and windows. 
The roaring of cannon and the pealing of bells apprized the crowd 
that the ornate barge the city had provided to ‘waft His Excel- 
lency across the bay’® had been sighted. The thirteen pilots in 
white uniforms who manned the barge were conspicuous as it 
moved on to the accompaniment of cheers to the Wall Street 
wharf. As it swept alongside the landing, bands on the banks 
joined in the noisy welcome of the cannon and the bells. When 
Washington, in a plain suit of blue and buff, rose to descend ‘the 
stairs covered with crimson trapping, the shouts of the populace 
drowned the combined noises of the mechanical devices.’? 

Declining the use of carriages, he proceeded with his party and 
the committee on foot down Wall Street to Pearl, then Queen, 


1 Maclay, 37. 2 Writings, 1, 470-71. 8 Ames, 1, 46. 
* June 3,1789.  §% Maclay, 31. 6 Daily Advertiser, April 24,1789. 7 Ibid. 


DAYS OF COMEDY 7 


and up the full length of that then fashionable thoroughfare, 
which boasted a sidewalk that would accommodate three walking 
abreast, to the house prepared for him on Cherry Street. The crowd 
followed, men, women, and children, masters and men. There at 
the house they left him; and a few moments later he returned down 
Pearl Street to the home of Governor George Clinton to dine. 
That night the houses of the city were illuminated. The monarch 
had entered his capital. To the masses he was the maker of a 
nation; to the world of fashion he was the creator of a court.} 

The day of inauguration found the city fluttering with flags, 
colorful with decorations, Wall Street fairly screaming with the 
spirit of festivity. Wreaths and flowers hung from windows. A 
reverential throng packing Wall, Broad, and Nassau Streets 
watched the great man enter the Hall; and a few minutes later he 
appeared upon the balcony of the Senate Chamber — a gallant 
figure in deep brown, ‘with medal buttons, an eagle on them, white 
stockings, a bag and sword’? — to take the oath. 

The keen eyes of Alexander Hamilton surveyed the scene from 
his home across the street. 

Thence back to the Senate Chamber where the inaugural ad- 
dress, in trembling hands, was read with difficulty because of the 
shaking paper. The erratic but loyal Maclay was pained to find 
that his hero was not ‘first in everything.’ Thence back to the 
house on Cherry Street. 

Never had the little city been so picturesquely and brilliantly 
illuminated as on that night of general rejoicing. Transparent 
paintings shone all over the town — that at the bottom of Broad- 
way ‘the finest ever seen in America.’‘ It was a beautiful evening, 
‘and no accident cast the smallest cloud upon the retrospect.’® 
A few evenings later, an inaugural ball was given by the Assem- 
bly in their rooms on Broadway above Wall Street. ‘The President 
_ ‘was pleased to honor the company with his presence,’ ® and ‘every 
pleasure seemed to be heightened’ as a result.’ There, too, was 
‘His Excellency the Vice-President,’ and members of Congress 
with their families, officers of the army, the Ministers of France 


1 Story of a Street, 221. 2 Maclay, 7-10. 8 Thid. 
4 Gazette of the United States, May 2, 1789. 5 Thid. 
§ [iid , May 8, 1789. 7 Daily Advertiser, May 8, 1789, 


8 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


and Spain. ‘Joy, satisfaction and vivacity was expressed on every 
countenance.’! Each lady, passing the ticket-taker, was presented 
with a fan made in Paris, with an ivory frame containing a medal- 
lion portrait of Washington in profile. ‘A numerous and brilliant 
collection of ladies’ it was, according to the impressionable re- 
porter, all dressed ‘with a consummate taste and elegance.’? 

Society awoke that night to the fact that a nation had been 
created and a capital established on the Hudson, and it fairly 
titillated at the prospect of the gayety of a ‘court.’ 


Vv 


Now let us take a turn around the city and familiarize ourselves 
with the setting of the drama. It will not take long, for the little 
city of thirty-five thousand was compactly built. Broadway, the 
most promising and pretentious of the thoroughfares, was paved 
only to Vesey Street — beyond that, mud. The houses, most of 
them modest, were surrounded by gardens. From the west side of 
Broadway to the west side of Greenwich, the town was well built 
up from Bowling Green to Reade. Beyond that, only the hospital 
and a few widely scattered houses. On the east side, building ex- 
tended as far north as Broome. Were we on a shopping expedition 
we should seek Nassau and William, the heart of the retail district, 
passing on the former many attractive homes including that of 
Aaron Burr. Were we bent on a promenade, to meet the ladies and 
the dandies, we should betake ourselves to Wall, where, notwith- 
standing the auctioneers, the shoemakers, the grocers, the tailors, 
the confectioners, the peruke-makers, we should pass handsome 
homes. Perhaps we should jostle the statesmen emerging from the 
boarding-houses along the way. 

These narrow, crooked streets we should find more tolerable 
by day than by night. The street lamps were at wide intervals 
and frequently unlighted. If we escaped a highwayman in the 
night, we should be lucky to escape the mud of the poorly paved 
sidewalks, and if we did not bruise our shins by collision with the 
town pumps, we should be fortunate not to stumble over a pig. 
Off somewhere in the darkness we should probably hear the curses 
of some unfortunate wanderer fallen over an obstruction, the 

1 Daily Advertiser, May 8, 1729. 8 Gazette of the United States, May 9, 1789. 


DAYS OF COMEDY 9 


grunting of hogs rooting in the gutters, the barking of innumer- 
able dogs.1 The long line of negroes bearing burdens toward the 
river might pique our curiosity did we not know that they 
were the sewage carriers of the city doing their nightly routine 
work. 

Even by day we should find traveling not without its risks, for 
many of the streets were torn up for improvements.? Thus ‘the 
Hon. Mr. Huger,’ thrown from his sedan chair and painfully 
bruised, lays claim to immortality in the pages of Maclay ? and in 
the yellowing sheets of Fenno’s journal.’ Faring forth in search of 
the political celebrities, we should not have far to go, for most were 
herded in boarding-houses. Hamilton lived comfortably at Broad 
and Wall Streets, Burr around the corner on Nassau. Jefferson » 
was soon realizing his dream of comfort on Broadway after living 
in a little house in Maiden Lane. Randolph, the Attorney- 
General, had found a modest place in the country for two hundred 
_and fifty dollars with ‘an excellent pump of fresh water.’> Knox was 
living beyond his means on Broadway, and Adams was at Rich- 
mond Hill. But most of the lawgivers found boarding-houses more 
congenial to their purses. Thus, within a few steps on Great Dock 
Street we should find Robert Morris, Caleb Strong, Pierce Butler, 
Fisher Ames, and Theodore Sedgwick; in Maiden Lane, James 
Madison; on Smith Street, Charles Carroll, and on Water Street, 
Oliver Ellsworth. 

Turning from the celebrities to the lowly and the base, we could 
visit the slave market which was then active, for there were more 
than two thousand negroes in bondage in the city. While the 
orators at Federal Hall were speaking reverently of liberty, the 
hammer of the auctioneer was knocking down negro girls to the 
highest bidder, and the local papers were running ‘rewards’ for 
the capture of runaway slaves.* Were we in the mood to walk to 
the end of the pavement on Broadway, we could regale ourselves, 
in the grove where the City Hall now stands, with a view of the 
gallows enshrined in a Chinese pagoda where the executioners com- 
peted successfully at times with the debaters in attracting the 


1 Governor Page complained bitterly of hogs and mud. Memorial History, 111, 48. 
2 The Daily Advertiser advertises the specifications April 13, 1789. 

3 Maclay, 90. 4 Gazette of the United States, June 27, 1789, 

’ Memorial History, m1, 47. 6 Daily Advertiser, March 6, 1789. 


10 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


curious. There, too, stood the whipping-post.! In the midst of so 
much that was grim, little wonder that the statesmen resented the 
frequent ringing of funeral bells. ‘The gentlemen from the country 
complain exceedingly of this noisy, unmeaning and absurd cus- 
tom,’ wrote ‘A Citizen’ to his favorite paper. ‘This is the moment 
to abolish it, and give an evidence of a disposition to please them.’ ? 
But it is not of record that the ‘gentlemen from the country’ were 
permitted to interfere with the privileges of the dead. 

| Were we to turn from these grim specters to amusement, we 
could get a conveyance at one of the city’s six livery stables to 
carry us into the country to the Florida tea-gardens on the North 
River; thence to Perry’s on the present site of Union Square, or to 
Wilhiamson’s, near the present site of Greenwich and Harrison.? 
But were our mood of darker hue, we could find no dearth of en- 
_tertainment at the taverns. When Congress quarreled and strug- 
-gled at Federal Hall, and Washington dwelt on Cherry Street, one 
hundred and thirty-one taverns were licensed in the city to which 
flocked all manner of men. There, with liquor or ale, we could en- 
joy a cock-fight and pick the winner, or gather about the table and 
gamble at cards. Laborers, loafers, sailors, criminals infested 
these dives, and if we preferred cleaner company, we might get an 
invitation to the Black Friars, the one social club in the city.4 Or, 
if more intellectual entertainment were desired, it could be found 
in the wooden building painted red on John Street, a stone’s- 
throw from Saint Paul’s Church where Washington had his pew, 
where the Old American Company regaled the people of the pit, 
the boxes, and galleries with the plays of Shakespeare, Sheridan, 
Goldsmith, Garrick, and some of indifferent merit. Here ‘The 
Father,’ by William Dunlap, the historian of the American theater, 
had its first presentation — a notable event, since Washington, a 
spectator, was seen to laugh at the comedy.® Indeed, his health 
permitting, the President was frequently seen in his box which 
bore the arms of the United States, and the press was not amiss in 
keeping the public informed when the great man went to the play.” 
He had been in the house on Cherry Street but a few days, when, 


1 Memorial History, wu, 45. 2 Daily Advertiser, April 15, 1789. 
8 New York in 1789, 117. 

* Memorial History, u1, 65; New York in 1789, 117-20. 

§ New York in 1789, 172-765. § Ibid., 176, 7 Ibid., 178. 


DAYS OF COMEDY 11 


disregarding the frowns of the purists, he went to see the ‘School 
for Scandal.’ Two days before, the ‘Daily Advertiser’ had gayly 
hinted of the prospective visit. ‘It is whispered that “The School 
for Scandal” and “The Poor Soldier” will be acted on Monday 
night for the entertainment of the President,’ it said. And then it 
added, by way of gentle admonition to the players: ‘Mrs. Henry 
ought on this occasion to condescend to give passion and tender- 
ness to Maria.... Mrs. Henry ought to act Norah and improve 
the delightful farce by the melody of her voice. Mrs. Henry ought 
to take no offense at the suggestion.’! We may be sure it was a fes- 
tive occasion, for Fenno’s ‘court journal’ said that ‘there was a 
most crowded house and the ladies, who were numerous, made a 
most brilliant appearance.’? One sour Senator in the presidential 
party did not take kindly to the play. ‘I think it an indecent 
representation before ladies of character and virtue,’ he wrote — 
and there were ladies in the party! The President, however, was 
_ pleased to go again quite soon to see ‘The Clandestine Marriage,’ 
again subjecting ‘ladies of character and virtue’ to temptation, 
for Mrs. Morris and Mrs. Knox were with his party when ‘Mrs. 
Henry and Mrs. Morris played with their usual naiveté and un- 
common animation’ due to ‘the countenance of such illustrious 
auditors.’ 4 

Other forms of entertainment, all too few, were not neglected 
by the celebrities. ‘The President and his Lady and family and 
several other persons of distinction were pleased to honor Mr. 
Bowen’s wax-works exhibit with their company at 74 Water Street’ 
— looms among the announcements of the ‘court journal.’® 


VI 


Nor were the entertainments dependent wholly upon the resi- 
dents and governmental dignitaries. The little city was bravely 
simulating the airs of a real capital. The social climbers, hearing 
of the ‘court,’ flocked to town from the four corners with their 
wives and daughters.° The cost of living mounted alarmingly, and 
the rental of suitable houses was prohibitive to many. Oliver 


1 May 9, 1789. 2 Gazette of the United States, May 13, 1789. * Maclay, 31. 
4 Gazette of the United States, June 6, 1789. 

5 [bal., September 19, 1789. 

® Story of a Street, 112. 


12 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Wolcott, hesitating about accepting a place paying fifteen hundred 
dollars a year, had been assured by Ellsworth that a house could be 
had for two hundred dollars, wood for four dollars a cord, hay for 
eight dollars a ton, but that marketing was twenty-five per cent 
higher than at Hartford.! But soon after his arrival, the discour- 
aged official was writing his father that ‘the expense of living here 
will be greater than I had imagined.’? The leading tavern, on the 
west side of Broadway, near Cedar, was a modest establishment 
with immodest prices. And to make matters worse, ‘society’ had 
set a giddy pace. 

We are especially interested in this society because Jefferson, on 
his arrival, was shocked at its unrepublican tone. The inner or 
select circle did not number more than three hundred.* A French 
traveler was impressed with its tendency to luxury, its love of 
grandeur, and ostentatious display. ‘English luxury,’ ‘English 
fashions,’ the women in ‘the most brilliant silks, gauzes, hats, and 
borrowed hair,’ the men, more modest as to dress, but taking 
‘their revenge in the luxury of the table’ and in smoking cigars 
from the Spanish islands.> The Loyalist families were forward in 
asserting their social prerogatives in the shadow of the Republican 
‘Court.’ Did they not have money and the prestige of having 
wined and dined and danced with the officers of His Majesty in the 
days of the occupation? None more conspicuous than the Henry 
Whites with a fine house on Wall Street, with one son in His 
Majesty’s army, another a rear admiral in His Majesty’s navy. 
About the Misses White — ‘so gay and fashionable, so charming 
in conversation, with such elegant figures’ — the young blades 
gathered like moths about the flame. Giddy were the parties 
there, the men Beau Brummels in the extreme of fashion, and out 
of the few fugitive pictures we catch a glimpse of Mrs. Verplanck 
dancing a minuet ‘in hoop and petticoats,’ and a young beau 
catching cold from ‘riding home in a sedan chair with one of the 
glasses broken,’ after partaking too freely of hot port wine.® 

Balls and teas there were aplenty, but ‘society’ preferred to 
dine and talk. Hamilton in his home on Wall Street gave frequent 
dinners insinuating when not boldly proclaiming his doubts of the 


1 Gibbs, 1, 22. * Tbid.)'t, 43: 3 New York in 1789, 19. 4 Ibid., 119. 
5 Warville, 96-97. 6 Republican Court, 210, note. 


DAYS OF COMEDY 13 


people. Van Breckel, the Dutch Minister, entertained lavishly, 
making his dining-room the resort of the little foreign circle — and 
every one tried to keep up the pace. 

It was the pace that killed — financially. The Henry Knoxes 
- then began their journey toward bankruptcy, living elaborately on 
Broadway, maintaining horses and grooms, five servants, and 
giving two dinners a month. Almost a ninth of his salary went for 
wine alone. What with his own hair-dressing, and that of the ex- 
pansive Lucy, who wore her hair, after the extreme fashion, ‘at 
least a foot high, much in the form of a churn bottom upward,’ the 
family account with Anthony Latour, hair-dresser, was no small 
matter, and his annual deficit was a third of his salary. 

Nor was the Secretary of War unique. The social life was a hec- 
tic swirl of calls, teas, entertainments. ‘When shall I get spirit to 
pay all the social debts I owe?’ wrote one lady of quiet tastes.? 
It was harvest-time for the dressmakers, the jewelers, the hair- 
dressers. The ball given in compliment to Washington by the 
French Minister called for special costumes, for there were ‘two 
sets of Cotillion Dancers in complete uniforms; one set in that of 
France and the other in Buff and Blue,’ while the ladies were 
‘dressed in white with Ribbands, Bouquets and Garlands of Flow- 
ers answering to the uniforms of the Gentlemen.’? And so with 
other functions equally gay. 

But after all, the ‘court’ had come to town, and if there was no 
Majesty on Cherry Street, it was not because the ‘court set’ did 
not pretend it so. The illusion of vanity was fostered by the snob- 
bery of Fenno of the ‘court journal.’ When Madame Washington 
arrived, ‘conducted over the bay in the President’s barge rowed 
by thirteen eminent pilots in handsome white dress,’ the editor 
enumerated the ladies who had ‘paid their devoirs to the amiable 
consort of our beloved President.’ There were ‘the Lady of His 
Excellency the Governor, Lady Sterling, Lady Mary Watts, Lady 
Kitty Duer, La Marchioness de Brehan, the ladies of the Most 
Honorable Mr. Langdon, and the Most Honorable Mr. Dalton 
... and a great many other respectable characters.’* This was too 


1 Brooks, Knoz, 217-18. 
2 Mrs. Iredell; McRee, Iredell, 1, 296-97. 
® Gazette of the United States, May 16, 1789. 4 Ibid., May 30, 1789. 


14 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


much for ‘A Republican’ who worked off his fury in a scornful 
letter to the opposition paper referring to the ‘tawdry phraseology,’ 
to the ‘titular folly of Europe’s courts,’ and suggesting that we 
‘leave to the sons and daughters of corrupted Europe their levees, 
Drawing Rooms, Routs, Drums, and Tornedos.’! It was to re- 
quire more than this, however, to jar the high-flying Fenno from 
the clouds, and his readers were soon informed that ‘His Excel- 
lency the Vice-President, His Excellency the Governor of the State, 
and many other personalities of the greatest distinction will be 
present at the theater this evening.’ It was not for nothing that 
the pedagogue pensman from Boston had launched his paper with 
the hope ‘that the wealthy part of the community will become 
patrons of this publication.’? The ‘inconveniency of being fash- 
ionable’ was impressed upon one Senator on finding a colleague, 
who, having ‘set up a coach,’ and, embarrassed in his plans by the 
irregular adjournments, was wont to sit alone in the Chamber “in 
a state of ennui’ as much as ‘two or three hours’ waiting for his 
carriage ‘to take him three or four hundred yards.’* | 

But while there was much of this ridiculous affectation, society 
was not without its charms; for Mrs. Hamilton had her days for 
receiving, and her drawing-room was brilliant, and all the more 
interesting because her vivacious sister, Mrs. Church, just back 
from London, bringing with her ‘a late abominable fashion of 
Ladies, like Washwomen with their sleeves above their elbows,’ 
was there to assist. And all the men were not on stilts, for it is on 
record that the congressional delegation from Pennsylvania would 
occasionally break through the ‘court circle’ to dine from three to 
nine, and indulge in ‘a scene of beastial badness’ with Robert 
Morris proving himself ‘certainly the greatest blackguard in that 
way.’> There was the usual small gossip to bring the soarers to 
earth. The cream served at the table of Mrs. Washington was not 
the best. Mrs. Morris had been compelled to ‘rid herself of a mor- 
sel’ of spoiled food there, but ‘Mrs. Washington ate a whole heap 
of it.’® Mrs. Knox amused the Mother Grundys because so fat, and 

1 Daily Advertiser, June 19, 1789. 

2 Gazette of the United States, April 15, 1789. 

§ Maclay, 257-58. 


4 Wharton, Salons, Colonial and Republican, 53. 
5 Maclay, 266. 6 Jbid., 73-74. 


DAYS OF COMEDY 15 


her blundering misuse of words caused much tittering behind fans 
and much whispering among her friends. 

But it was on the Wall Street promenade that the gossips de- 
pended for their choicest morsels. The Wall Street of that day was 
just beginning to displace Pearl as the abode of fashion. True, there 
were a few business houses, a tavern, a fashionable caterer, a 
jeweler, but from Broadway to Pearl there was a row of substan- 
tial residences in which dwelt people of importance. It was there 
in the promenade that the political celebrities were encountered, 
but more appealing to the gentlemen of pleasure were the fine 
ladies who passed in their finery — gay silks and satins — walking 
or taking the air luxuriously in their sedan chairs. The cronies of 
Dan McCormick, the unsnared and lordly entertainer, who gazed 
out of the windows of his House of Gossip at Number 39, and 
from his front steps surveyed the parade with the eyes of connois- 
seurs, must have been trying to the modesty of the timid — but 
nerhaps none such passed that way. If they laughed over the 
latest blunders of Mrs. Knox as she hove into sight like a huge ship 
in full sail, and made merry over the sister of the French Consul as 
she was borne luxuriously along in her sedan chair, we may be sure 
that they were appreciative of the pretty. And these crowded the 
narrow street for the promenade, quite as much bent on amusement 
and flirtation as the men about town on the steps of the House of 
Gossip. 

For it was an age of gallantry, the men quite as vain as the 
women dared be, and there, in addition to political celebrities, 
paraded the local blades of society in their white buzz wigs, their 
three-cornered hats, and silver shoe buckles. Here the elegant 
Hamilton in banter with a blushing belle, there the courtly Burr 
bowing over the hand of a coquette unafraid of the fire, and yonder 
Dr. John Bard, who prescribed pills for the fashionable, pounding 
the pavement with his heavy cane as he walked along smiling a bit 
sardonically upon his patients. And, swinging along like a sym- 
phony, a dandy in a scarlet coat with mother-of-pearl buttons, a 
_ white silk waistcoat embroidered with colored flowers, black 
satin breeches, white silk stockings, and a cocked hat, an Irish 
miniature painter out for an airing and to give the ladies a treat. 
_ Here — on Wall Street — was Vanity Fair.’ 

_ 1 Story of a Street, 112, 114-17, 121. 


16 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Albeit the Vice-President had not then become the social lead 
of the Nation, society liked nothing better than an invitation to 
Richmond Hill, the home of Adams, a mile and a half from the 
city. Even Abigail was delighted, for her home reminded her “of 
the valley of Honiton in Devonshire,’ with its avenue of forest 
trees, its shrubbery, its green fields, its pastures full of cattle, and 
the Hudson ‘white flecked with sails.’! Here at the dinner-table 
‘ statesmen and their wives and the social leaders contrived to talk 
like ladies and gentlemen of the court, and Jefferson thought in a 
language foreign to a republic. But good talk it was, and good 
dinners, we may be sure, even though the French Consul did take 
his cook to Richmond Hill with the explanation that he had had 
experience with New York dinners.? There was enough elegance at 
Richmond Hill to encourage the Adams coachman to put on airs 
that offended the groundlings as he drove through the streets. 


VII 


But it was about the ‘court’ on Cherry Street that the interest of 
society centered. It was a plain brick mansion with five windows ~ 
looking out on Cherry Street and as many on Franklin Square. 
The furniture was plain, and Madame Washington had sent by 
sea from Mount Vernon numerous articles of luxury and taste — 
pictures, vases, ornaments presented by European admirers. Here 
the first President in the first days of the Republic received visi- 
tors, gave dinners and receptions, consulted with his Cabinet. 
The following year he moved to a more commodious house on 
Broadway below Trinity Church. 

The great man had entered upon his physical decline when he 
assumed the Presidency, and many found him changed — ‘pale, 
almost cadaverous,’ his deportment ‘invariably grave,’ his so- 
briety barely stopping short of sadness. Even at Mrs. Washing- 
ton’s drawing-rooms, when beautiful girls swarmed about him, 
his face never softened to a smile. It is more than probable that 
he was not a little bored by the artificial restraints imposed upon 
him by his advisers on etiquette who had aristocratic notions of 


1 Richmond Hill, at present site of Charlton and Varick Streets. 
2 Letters of Mrs. Adams (to Mrs. Shaw), 11, 201; (to Thomas Brand-Hollis), n, 205. 
8 Ames (to Minot), 1, 34; Maclay, 375; Familiar Letters, 86-89. | 


DAYS OF COMEDY 17 


the dignity of his position. Both Hamilton and Adams were re- 
sponsible for planning his isolation from the people. Did citizens 
seek a meeting? This was a matter for the chamberlain or gentle- 
man-in-waiting. Should he give public entertainments? Not at all 
— only small dinners. Could he make calls? Very guardedly, and 
with ‘few attendants,’ but formal visits should be reserved for the 
rare occasions when ‘an Emperor of Germany or some other sov- 
ereign should travel in the country.’! Thus it came to pass that he 
found himself with a ‘court chamberlain’ in the flamboyant 
Colonel Humphreys, who reveled in ceremony, and on one occa- 
sion moved Parson Weems’s perfect man to profanity.?, When the 
erstwhile host of Fraunces Tavern was selected as the presiding 
deity of the kitchen, he appeared in the papers as ‘Steward of the 
Household.’* He too tried the great man’s patience and outraged 
his sense of economy by serving a shad early in the season that had 
cost two dollars, and the royal fish was devoured by the ‘Steward 
_ of the Household’ in the kitchen. 

But on state occasions the highfaluting notions of his advisers 
prevailed, and he rode forth in regal magnificence in the finest 
coach ever seen in America, a marvelous thing in shape and color, 
decorated with cupids and festooned with flowers. Thus he lum- 
bered through the streets drawn by four horses except when 
driving to Federal Hall, when six were necessary. 

And so they who dreamed of royal pomp were pleased with the 
progress made, and at the dinner tables wagging tongues dwelt 
ecstatically on the advantages of monarchical government, and 
Fenno’s ‘court journal’ began the publication of ‘The Discourses 
of Davila,’ by the Vice-President. Thus, when Jefferson arrived 
the following spring to meet society at the dinner tables, he was 
filled with ‘wonder and mortification’ to find that ‘politics was 
the chief topic, and a preference for kingly over republican govern- 
ment... evidently the favorite sentiment.’ 

But we may be sure that no such sentiments were heard at the 
President’s dinners, which appear to have been dull, formal, and 
silent enough. No fault could be found with the food, drink, or 


1 Adams, Works, vu, 491-92. § Thayer’s Washington, 180-81, 
8 Gazette of the United States, May 6, 1789, # Republican Court, 149, note. 
§ Autobiography, Ford, 1, 171. 


18 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


service. Even the gout-pestered Maclay found one of these din- 
ners ‘the best of the kind I was ever at,’! and the more easily 
pleased Iredell was immensely delighted with the wine.? But such 
silence, such solemnity! ‘The most solemn dinner ever I sat at,’ 
wrote Maclay. ‘Not a health drank, scarce a word said until the 
cloth was taken away.’ Then Washington filled his glass and 
solemnly drank to the health of each of his guests by name. Then 
‘everybody imitated him, and such a buzz of “‘health, sir,’’ and 
“health, madame,” and ‘‘Thank you, sir,” and “Thank you, Ma- 
dame,” never had Iheard before.’ Then another prolonged silence 
— and the ladies retired — and the dinner was over.? Months 
later, Maclay dined at the President’s again. ‘The President 
seemed to bear in his countenance a settled aspect of melancholy,’ 
he wrote. ‘No cheering ray of convivial sunshine broke through 
the cloudy gloom of settled seriousness.’ The great man was evi- 
dently bored — much company forced upon him that he would 
gladly have shunned. Cold, serious to melancholy, silent, he sat 
and ‘played on the table with a knife and fork like a drum stick.’ 
So it was at the previous dinner when, retaining his fork as the 
cover was removed, he “played with the fork, striking on the edge 
of the table with it.’4 

Here we may leave him playing on the table with his fork, and 
turn to the proceedings at Federal Hall. 


VIII 


Madison soon verified his fear that few members of Congress 
could be relied upon for constructive work. Then, as ever after, 
this fell to the industrious few, of whom Madison himself was by 
odds the most dependable and wise. Petty ceremonies and for- 
malities continued to disturb the serenity of some. When a mem- 
ber took exception to the reference in the minutes to a Presiden- 
tial message as a ‘most gracious speech,’ as imitative of the parlia- 
mentary references to addresses from the throne, Adams was all 
but shocked to suffocation. As for himself he preferred ‘a dignified 
and respectable government,’ but the point was pressed and the of- 
fensive words erased.5 Receiving a letter addressed to him as ‘His 


1 Maclay, 138. * Tredell, 11, 138, ® Maclay, 138, 
4 Jhid., 138, 206. § Tbid., 101. 


DAYS OF COMEDY 19 


Excellency,’ Adams took the sense of the Senate on the propriety 
of opening it. Robert Morris dryly remarked that their Majesty, 
the people, could write as they wished, and that crisis passed. 
When a Bishop was mentioned in the minutes as ‘Right Reverend,’ 
~and Maclay snorted his disapproval, Adams, in righteous wrath, 
informed him that ‘the government will never be properly ad- 
ministered until titles are adopted in the fullest manner.’ ? 

But all the while James Madison, constructive, profound, was 
seeking to drag his colleagues of the divine afflatus from the 
clouds to the working of the untilled field. Money was needed — 
more even than titles — and precious time was being squandered. 
In an earnest appeal, he begged for the postponement of the con- 
sideration of a permanent fiscal system in the hope of persuading 
the suppliants for tariff aid to wait awhile. But it was of no avail. 
Privilege entered the halls of Congress in the very beginning. 
When, at length, a measure was framed, the merchants of New 
York, Philadelphia, and Boston made common cause to hold it 
back. They had ordered heavily in anticipation of such a law and 
were determined to prevent its enactment until their goods ar- 
rived. The whole thing smacked of scandal. The merchants had 
already added the amount of the duties to the price of the goods 
on their shelves, increasing their profits while depriving the Gov- 
ernment of the necessities of life. With the Government starving 
for revenue, the mercantile interest, with the aid of members, 
held it off until July 4th, and then it was passed with the proviso 
that it should be inoperative until August Ist. Many, says a 
noted historian, thought this ‘the first instance of a series in which 
the action of government turned in favor of the moneyed 
class.’® | | | 

The creation of the executive departments next called forth 
acrimonious discussions. Should the finances be in the hands of a 
man or acommission? Where could be found a single man capable 
of such a task? The Republic would be endangered were one man 
to have command of three or four millions. Then, too, the Cabinet 
was liable to be looked upon by the President as of more con- 
sequence than the Senate. A system of favoritism would be es- 
tablished, and oligarchy confirmed, the liberties of the people 

'Maclay, 388. = 2 *Ibid., 50, 8 Bassett, The Federalist System. 


20 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


destroyed. And the power of removal — who should possess 
that? Some wanted to lodge the power in the President, others in 
the Senate. Madison favored the former.? But others could not 
see it that way. What! exclaimed one statesman, give the power 
to the President? Why, ‘ministers would obtrude upon us to 
govern and direct the measures of the legislature and support the 
influence of their master.’ A new Walpole would arise.2 ‘Good 
God,’ cried another, ‘authorize in a free republic... by your first 
act, the exertion of a dangerous royal prerogative in your Chief 
Magistrate!’4 Theresult was the striking out of the authorization 
of the President to remove on the ground that it was implied in the 
Constitution. Madison took this view, and it was to rise against 
him in his later battles with Hamilton over the implied powers. 

This jealousy between the executive and legislative depart- 
-ments soon found some justification in the action of Washington 
himself. It was late in the summer of the first year that he ap- 
peared in the Senate with General Knox to get ‘advice and con- 
sent’ to some propositions respecting a treaty with the Southern 
Indians. With cold dignity he took his place beside Adams, with 
Knox near at hand. The latter passed him a paper which he, in 
turn, gave to Adams, who began to read. The windows were up 
and the purport was all but lost in the rumble of carriages on 
Wall Street. i 

‘Do you advise and consent?’ asked Adams. 

- A Senator suggested that in a matter of importance new to the 
Senate, it was the duty of Senators first to inform themselves. 
Storm-clouds appeared on the presidential countenance. Some 
one moved postponement of action on the first article, then the 
second — and third. Finally, the motion was made that the whole 
be referred to a senatorial committee. 

Up Washington ‘started in a violent fret.” The motion defeated 
the purpose of his coming. He had brought along the Secretary of 
War who knew all that it was necessary for the Senate to know. 
The reference to the committee would mean delay and time was 
pressing. Then, making a virtue of necessity, he agreed to the ~ 
postponement, and withdrew ‘with sullen dignity.’ 


1 Gerry, Annals, May 20, 1789, 8 Writings (to Randolph), 1, 471-73, 
8 Jackson, Annals, 1, 486-89, 4 Page, Annals, 1, 548-52, 


DAYS OF COMEDY 21 


‘I cannot be mistaken,’ wrote a Senator that evening in his 
boarding-house, ‘the President wishes to tread on the necks of the 
Senate. Commitment will bring the matter to discussion, at least 
in the committee, where he is not present. He wishes us to see 
with the eyes and hear with the ears of his Secretary only. The 
Secretary to advance the premises, the President to draw the con- 
clusions, and to bear down our deliberations with his personal 
authority and presence... . This will not do with Americans.’ ! 

This fear, accentuated by the incident referred to, was to grow 
into a conviction a little later, when a more domineering and mas- 
terful figure than Washington or Knox appeared upon the scene. 
By many his advent had been eagerly awaited. To the leaders his 
identity was known, for the genius of Alexander Hamilton as a 
financier had been established, and his ambition was surmised.? 
His aspirations were supported by the mercantile interests gen- 
erally, and the political forces they controlled. Even they who 
were to become his political enemies were favorable to his selec- 
tion — preferring him to John Jay, who was considered. There is 
something of irony in the letter written to Jefferson by Madison to 
the effect that Hamilton was ‘best qualified for that species of 
business, and on that account would be preferred by those who 
know him personally.’ 

To most he promised to be a successful administrator of finance, 
and only the few among his intimates foresaw his rapid rise to the 
brilliant leadership of a powerful party. Certainly there could 
have been but few to take alarm on reading in the ‘Daily Adver- 
tiser ’ on September 12, 1789, the simple announcement of one of 
the most momentous events in the political history of the country: 

The President of the United States has been pleased to make the fol- 
lowing nominations of Officers for the Department of the Treasury: 

Alexander Hamilton, Esq. of this city, Secretary. 

Nicholas Everleigh, Esq. of South Carolina, Comptroller. 


And the Senate of the United States having taken the said nominations 
into consideration were pleased to advise and consent to the same. 


1 Maclay, 128-31. 2 Tredell (Lowther to Iredell), 11, 258-58. 
* Writings, 1, 471-73. 2 


4 


CHAPTER II 
HAMILTON: A PORTRAIT 


I 


HE genius for whom the Nation had been waiting, who 

walked briskly and with a martial air! into the Treasury, and 
sat down at the almost effeminate mahogany desk with the 
women’s faces carved upon the legs, to bring order out of chaos, 
looked the leader. Not that he was of commanding stature, for he 
was but five feet seven in height, with a figure of almost boyish 
slimness. It was rather in his soldierly erectness and the dignity 
of his bearing that he impressed. If his carriage suggested the 
camp, the meticulous care of his dress hinted of the court, for he 
was something of an elegant in his attire. We have one striking 
picture of him in a blue coat with bright buttons, the skirts un- 
usually long, with a white waistcoat, black silk small-clothes, 
white silk stockings;? another in fine lace ruffles. It is quite im- 
possible to think of him as unfit for an instant summons to a court 
levee or a ladies’ drawing-room, albeit Wolcott, who saw him first 
in his office, thought him ‘a very amiable plain man.’‘ It was an 
age of frills and fancies among the men of the aristocracy and his’ 
very conservatism would have dissuaded him from the slightest 
departure from the conventions. 

It was his head and features that denoted the commander. His 
well-shaped, massive, and symmetrical head, with its reddish fair 
hair turned back from his forehead, powdered and collected in a 
queue behind, was not so likely to attract attention as his pro- 
nounced features. These were unique in that rarest of all combina- 
tions of beauty and strength. He was handsome enough to be 
attractive to women, with his fair complexion and almost rosy 
cheeks, his well-moulded lips, and dark, almost violet, deep-set 
eyes that could smile as sweetly and seductively as any gallant’s. 


1 Warville, 102. 2 Familiar Letters, 236-37, 
3 Oliver, 114.’ ¢ Gibbg, 1, 22. 





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HAMILTON: A PORTRAIT 99 


And yet these lips could be firm and stern, and the soft, mirthful 

eyes could freeze and flash. If women were to observe the softer 
nature, the politicians were to note the man of relentless will dis- 
closed in the firm, strong jaw. Graceful and debonair, elegant and 
courtly, seductive and ingratiating, playful or impassioned, he 
could have fitted into the picture at the Versailles of Louis XV, or 
at the dinner table at Holland House. No one born in the atmo- 
sphere of courts could have looked the part more perfectly. 

And yet, such was his origin that the envious Adams could sneer | 
at him as ‘the bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar,’! and it was not 
without reason that Gouverneur Morris, meditating his funeral 
oration, and his ‘illegitimate birth,’ contrived a mode ‘to pass over 
this handsomely.’* Even the sympathetic researches of Mrs. 
Atherton have failed to lift the mystery of his origin and family. 
Ail we know is that he was born of an irregular relation, without 
the intervention of the clergy,’ between an unprosperous Scotch 
merchant of the West Indies and a brilliant and beautiful daughter 
of the French Huguenots. Even his parentage by the man named 
Hamilton was doubted, on circumstantial evidence, by so ardent 
a friend as Pickering, who thought he had found the father in a 
physician. Whoever the father — and the Pickering Papers are 
not convincing — there is no doubt that Hamilton inherited his 
genius from his brilliant, passionate, high-strung mother. 

Nor does the mystery end with his birth. Pickering was half 
persuaded that the mother lived into the manhood of her son, but 
the church records at Saint Kitts bear out the claims of the family 
that she died in 1768. It is not easy to account for the rather mor- 
bid relations later between Hamilton and his father and brother. 
Both appear to have been a worthless sort. For years Hamilton 
was ignorant of his father’s whereabouts, which does not appear to 
have bothered him much.® Later there was some correspondence 
looking to a possible reunion in America, out of which nothing 
came.’ At intervals money passed from the great man in America 
to the indigent old man in the West Indies,’ but at no time does it 
appear that Hamilton had any thought of visiting his father in 


1 Autobiography, 278. £ Morris, Diary, 1, 456. 
* Oliver, 15. 4 See Appendix, Lodge, Alexander Hamilton. 
5 Works, 1x, 405-06; letter to brother. 6 Jiid., x, 109. ™ Intimate Life, 3. 


24 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


the isle of his childhood. It was a long cry from the squalid life 
in the West Indies to Mrs. Bingham’s drawing-room, and the 
genius turned his back upon the past. 


II 


There is nothing so inexplicable in this amazing man as the pre- 
cocity of his genius. There is a suggestion of it in the younger 
Pitt, but he had sat from infancy at the feet of Chatham. To the 
easy-going natives of his natal isle this passionate, fiery-tempered, 
supersensitive boy, dreaming of power, must have seemed an 
exotic. As a mere child he appeared to sense that his field of con- 
quest lay across the sea. He was planning a career while his com- 
panions were absorbed in childish games. His early range of 
knowledge and reading was remarkable. In his passion for litera- 
ture he was unconsciously moulding one of the weapons for his 
successful assault on fame; through the pages of Plutarch he was 
lifting himself above the drab slothful surroundings to the com- 
panionship of the great. 

Sometimes fate was serving his destiny when he felt himself a 
captive beating against his cage. Thus, in the counting-room at 
Santa Cruz he was mastering business methods and absorbing the 
commercial spirit on which he was later to predicate his philosophy 
of government.! The business letters he wrote were preparations 
for the framing of his ‘Report on the Public Credit.’ Even then it 
was a peculiarity of his genius that he could write on business 
matters without clipping the wings of his fancy. He seemed born 
with a mastery of words, a rare gift of expression. When a hurri- 
cane swept the islands the description he wrote for a paper be- 
came the talk of the West Indies. Only a little while before he was 
rebelling against the ‘groveling ambition of a clerk,’ and passion- 
ately writing that he ‘would willingly risk his life but not his char- 
acter to elevate his station.’ These were the aspirings of a boy not 
yet thirteen. ‘I shall conclude by saying, I wish there was a war.’ 
Here we have a vivid light upon his character.’ 

The description of the hurricane made his fortune. Dreaming of 
rising by the sword, it was his pen that rallied friends who raised 
the money to send him to America for an education. Through all 

1 Life, by son, 1, 4. 2 Fiske, 1, 104-05. 


HAMILTON: A PORTRAIT 25 


his days he was to aspire to glory through the sword, little knowing 
that he was winning immortality with his pen. 

The Little Corsican touching the soil of France, the little West 
Indian landing in America — there is a striking analogy: both 
dreaming of martial glory in the land of strangers; both obsessed 
with a morbid ambition sustained by the rarest powers of applica- 
tion. 

The records of the years preceding the Revolution are but vague, 
though we get glimpses of the genius forging his weapons in the 
boy at the grammar school at Elizabethtown poring over books 
till midnight, to rise at dawn to continue his studies in the quiet 
of a near-by cemetery; practicing prose composition; writing an 
elegy on the death of a lady; composing the prologue and the epi- 
logue of a play,! and, at Kings College (Columbia), amazing his 
companions by the energy of his mind, and puzzling pedestrians 
by talking to himself as he walked for hours each day under the 
_ great trees of Batteau (Dey) Street.? Here, too, an occasional dis- 
play of the eloquence of maturity, enriched by the re of genius, 
set him apart. 

Then came the Revolution. ‘I wish there was a war!’ fend the 
boy of thirteen. And war came to find the lad of nineteen as eager 
to seize its opportunities as was the Corsican youth when ordered 
to clear the streets of Paris, 


III 


The war was to prove his genius, not as a soldier, but as a writer 
and constructive thinker on governmental matters. He was a 
natural journalist and pamphleteer — one of the fathers of the 
American editorial. His perspicacity, penetration, powers of con- 
densation, and clarity of expression were those of a premier edito- 
rial writer. These same qualities made him a pamphleteer without 
a peer. That he would have shone with equal luster in the repor- 
torial room of a modern paper is shown in his description of the 
hurricane, and in his letter to Laurens picturing vividly the closing 
hours of Major André.* From the moment he created a sensation, 
with ‘A Farmer Refuted,’ in his eighteenth year, until, in the 
closing months of his life, he was meeting Coleman surreptitiously 

1 Life, by son, 1, 10, 8 Ilid., 22, 8 Ibid., 263-74, 


26 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


in the night to dictate vigorous editorials for the New York ‘Eve- 
ning Post’ he had established, he recognized his power. No man 
ever complained more bitterly of the attacks of the press; none 
ever used the press more liberally and relentlessly to attack. 

In ‘A Farmer Refuted,’ the maturity of the thought, the sever- 
ity of the reasoning, the vigor of the onslaught, the familiarity 
with history and governmental processes displayed, denoted the 
hand of one seasoned in controversy. The sprightliness, wit, 
humor, sarcasm, suggested more than talent. The evident joy in 
the combat, with the air of assurance, was that of the fighter un- 
afraid. These are the qualities that were to run through ‘all of 
Hamilton’s literary work. Nowhere in the literature of invective 
is there anything more vitriolic than the attack on a war specula- 
tor and profiteer, under the signature of “Publius.’? This tendency 
to bitter invective will appear, as we proceed, in Hamilton’s at- 
tacks on Jefferson and Adams. 

But usually he appealed to reason, and then he was at his best. 
Thus, in ‘The Continentalist,’ urging a more perfect union and a 
more potent government, and in his letter to James Duer,’ we are 
impressed with the writer’s intimate knowledge of conditions, his 
constructive instinct, his vision.4 And thus, especially do these 
appear in ‘The Federalist’ — one of the most brilliant contribu- 
tions to the literature of political science in the world’s history. 
It will be impossible to comprehend the genius of Hamilton, his 
domination of his party, and his power, despite his unpopularity 
with the masses, without a foreknowledge of his force with the 
pen. It was his scepter and his sword. 


IV 


| His power as an orator was unsurpassed in any assembly that 
called it forth, but with very few exceptions he did not appear before 
the multitude. He swayed the leaders and won them to his leader- 
ship. There was little of fancy in his speeches, scarcely any appeal 
to the emotions, but he spoke with enthusiasm and an intensity of — 
conviction. Force, clearness, fire — ‘logic on fire’ — and a rapid 
fusillade of impressively directed facts — with these he usually 


1 Payne’s Journalism, 191-92. f 
2 Works, 1, 202. 3 Ibid., 1, 213-39, € Ibid., 1, 243-87. 


HAMILTON: A PORTRAIT | 27 


swept all before him. The comparatively few speeches which have 
come down to us fail to explain his power. The stories of audiences 
moved to tears are scarcely in keeping with the absence of the 
slightest attempts at pathos or appeals to the emotions. Kent, 
who heard him in court, recalled, long after Hamilton was dead, 
‘the clear, elegant and fluent style, and commanding manner.’! 
Physically, he was far from imposing, but it is easy to imagine the 
virility of his manner, the flash of his conqueror’s eye. In the New 
York Convention called to pass on the Constitution, it was the 
force and persuasiveness of his arguments that converted a hostile 
majority. Later Congress was to refuse him permission to pre- 
sent personally his reports on the ground that he might unduly 
sway its judgment; and Jefferson was to resent his interminable 
and passionate ‘harangues’ in the Cabinet room. But these exhi- 
bitions of his eloquence advanced his political career by impressing 
the leaders with the brilliancy of his intellect. 


v 


It is significant that, while he was not vain of his power as a 
writer and orator, he lived and died firmly convinced of his genius 
as a soldier. In the earliest of his letters we have his longing for a 
war. His son and biographer was impressed with the fact that, 
‘while arms seemed to be his predominant passion, the world was 
at peace.’? He never faced the prospect of a war without seeing 
an opportunity for distinction. At a time when he abhorred the 
French Revolution, and all associated with it, he wrote of Napo- 
leon as ‘that unequalled conqueror, from whom it is painful to 
detract.’* 

Was he a military genius? We have nothing on which to base a 
judgment. In the Revolution we see him attracting the attention 
of Washington by his military alertness on the heights of Har- 
lem. At Monmouth we see his horse shot under him as he dashes 
into the fray with a recklessness that looked to the commander like 
a courting of death. Throughout his services in the military house- 
hold of Washington, where he became all but indispensable in a 
secretarial capacity and in diplomacy, he chafed under the convic- 
tion that his place was in a position of command. One of his friends 

1 Life, by son, 1, 277. 2 [bid., 1, 69. 3 Works, v1, 276. 


28 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


declared that ‘the pen of our army was held by Hamilton; and 
for dignity of manner, pith of matter, and elegance of style, Gen- 
eral Washington’s letters are unrivaled in military annals,’ but 
the youthful Hamilton felt that he should have been the army’s 
sword.! The vision of the renown of the military conqueror was 
ever before him. The war was an opportunity for glory, and he was 
missing it. ‘I explained to you candidly my feelings in respect to 
military reputation,’ he wrote Washington when seeking a sepa- 
rate command, ‘and how much it was my object to act a con- 
spicuous part in some enterprise that might perhaps raise my 
character as a soldier above mediocrity.’? At Yorktown he took 
desperate chances in an effort for renown.’ We shall find him 
leaving the Treasury to command soldiers sent to put down the 
western insurrection, with no possible occasion for it beyond his 
preference for the saddle and the sword. And when war with France 
loomed large, we shall find him resorting to importunity and in- 
trigue to get the command over the protest of the President. 

Was Hamilton a Napoleon? He thought himself of the race of 
military masters. He had the courage, the coolness under fire, and 
the audacity, but nothing that he did disclosed more genius than 
was shown by Aaron Burr. Had the chance come, he might have 
justified his own high pretensions as a military genius — but it did 
not come. He died with his boyhood ambition to command great 
armies unrealized — and undimmed.$ 


VI 


His association of a strong military establishment with a strong 
and stable government was due in large measure to his tempera- 
ment. He was essentially an aristocrat. From the moment of his 
arrival in America, he cultivated only the élite. His most partisan 
biographer has painted his portrait in a sentence — ‘His sym- 
pathies were always aristocratic, and he was born with a rever- 
ence for tradition.’® There is nothing more contradictory in his 
career than the lowliness of his origin and his inherent passion for — 
the lofty. This charity student moved in mansions as to the manor 
born. He had lived on terms of comparative intimacy with the 


1 Life, by son, 1, 69.  Jbid., 1, 318, 8 Ibid, 
* Lodge, 26. 5 Oliver, 27, 


HAMILTON: A PORTRAIT 29 


aristocratic Washington of the camp, with Lafayette who brought 
something of the flavor of Old World aristocracy, and he married 
into one of the proudest of the manorial families, but his love of 
grandeur was inherent. He luxuriated in elegant society and fine 
houses, loved fine laces as an adornment, and, without having ever 
seen the interior of a gallery, at least affected a partiality for the 
fine arts, collecting such prints as his purse permitted, painting 
some himself, and advising Mrs. Washington in the purchase of 
paintings.! 

His ideal of government was the rule of ‘gentlemen’ — the domi- 
nation of aristocrats; on the theory that these, with a certain 
prestige to maintain, were more Jealous of their honor and above 
the vulgar strivings for mere place.? Thus it was impossible for 
him to conceive of a strong and capable government over which 
the aristocracy did not have sway.? Long before the Constitutional 
Convention we find him writing Morris on financial matters, set- 
_ ting forth the importance of creating an alliance between govern- 
ment and men of wealth.* One of his most enthusiastic panegyr- 
ists has illustrated his ideal: ‘The nearest approach to it is the 
popular conception of the empire of Japan — a mass of intelligent 
humanity, reckless of their lives, yet filled with the joy of life, 
eager for distinction, hungry for success, alert, practical, and 
merry; but at the same time subordinate, humbly and piously 
subordinate, toa pure abstraction.’> But this abstraction had to be 
aristocracy — never democracy; for he believed that democracy 
could only lead to anarchy.’ Temperamentally hostile to demo- 
cracy in the beginning, maintaining that attitude to the end, he 
never appreciated and always despised public opinion, and in 
1794 he frankly confessed to Washington that he ‘long since 
learned to hold public opinion of no value.’? This distrust of the 
people, contempt for democracy, and reliance on strong govern- 
ment supported by wealth, and, if need be, sustained by standing 
armies, were carried by him into the Constitutional Convention 
and there proclaimed with all the tremendous force of his person- 
ality. 


1 Intimate Life, 47 2 Oliver, 161-62. * Lodge, 177-78; Oliver, 163-64, 
4 Oliver, 86. 5 Iind., 263, ® Tbid., 376, 1 Works, vi, 457. 


30 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


VII 


Unless we divest ourselves of the Hamiltonian myths in refer- 
ence to the Constitution, an intelligent comprehension of his 
political character will be impossible. We must rid ourselves of 
the fallacious notion that he was satisfied with the Constitution 
or believed it adequate. No one contributed more mightily to 
making the Constitutional Convention possible. In the prelim- 
inary convention at Annapolis, no one did more to crystallize sen- 
timent for it, and it was his persuasive pen that wrote the history- 
making address there determined upon. About his dining-table 
in New York he did yeoman service in coaxing skeptical and reluc- 
tant members of Congress to call a convention. There, under a 
simulation of gayety, his eloquence and wit and banter made 
converts of the most stubborn—a service of immeasurable 
value.! 

But in the Convention itself he played no such part as is popu- 
larly ascribed to him. After the presentation of his own plan in the 
early stages, he played an inconspicuous part, and much of the 
time he was not only absent from the Convention, but out of the 
State. This was not because of indifference to the event, but to a 
realization that he could accomplish nothing for his plan.? 

This plan was a direct contradiction of that which was adopted. 
There is nothing conjectural about that fact — the records are 
indisputable. We have the plan, the brilliant five-hour oration in 
its behalf, the brief from which he spoke. These have come down 
to us, not from his enemies, but from his partial biographers, his 
son the editor of his ‘Works,’ and the report of Madison on the 
authenticity of which he himself passed. This plan provided for 
the election of a President for life; for Senators for life or during 
good behavior, and by electors with a property qualification; and 
for the crushing of the sovereignty of States through the appoint- 
ment by the President of Governors with a life tenure and the 
power to veto any act of the State legislatures, though passed — 
unanimously. Not only was the President enabled under this plan 
to negative any law enacted, but he had the discretionary power 
to enforce or ignore any law existing.2 Though his President, 
' Oliver, 149. 2 Fiske, 120; Lodge, 58. 8 Beck, 75. 


| 


HAMILTON: A PORTRAIT 31 


serving for life, was not called a king, he was to be armed with more 
arbitrary power than was possessed by the King of England. His 
English eulogist does not overstate when he says that ‘what he 
had in mind was the British Constitution as George III had tried 
hard to make it,’ and failed because the English people would not 
tolerate it.1 This interpretation of Hamilton’s purpose is reén- 
forced by another of his most brilliant disciples who asserts that 
‘Hamilton’s governor [President] would have been not dissimilar 
to Louis XIV and could have said with him, “‘L’état e’est moi.”’ 
... Thinly veiled, his plan? contemplated an elective king with 
greater powers than those of George III, an imitation House of 
Lords, and a popular House of Commons with a limited tenure.’ 
Even so this plan confessedly fell far short of his conception of an 
ideal government. In the brief for his speech‘ we are left in no 
doubt as to his partiality for a monarchy, in which the aristocracy 
should have a special power. ‘The monarch .. . ought to be heredi- 
tary, and to have so much power that it would not be his interest to 
risk much to acquire more.’ As for the aristocracy, ‘they should be 
so circumstanced that they can have no interest in a change.’> We 
should be ‘rescued from the democracy.’® As to the republican 
form of government — ‘Republics are liable to corruption and in- 
trigue, ” and, since ‘a republican government does not admit of a 
vigorous execution, it is therefore bad.’ ® 

Later, in one of his few discussions, he said that ‘those who mean 
to form a solid republican government ought to proceed to the 
confines of another government.’® His republic, and in his great 
speech he had conceded that no other form would be accepted by 
the people, ‘was to be an aristocratic as distinguished from ademo- 
cratic republic, and the power of the separate States was to be 
effectually crippled.’ ?° In one of his brief Convention talks he said 


-of the Statesthat ‘as States he thought they should be abolished.’ 4 


Even after the Constitution had been adopted, he believed that one 
of the objects of administration should be ‘to acquire for the fed- 
eral government more consistency than the Constitution seems to 
promise for so great a country,’ to the end that it ‘may triumph 


1 Oliver, 156. 2 Works, 1, 8347-69, ® Beck, 76. 
4 Life, by son, 0, 487. § Ibid., 487. 8 Tbid., 488. T Ibid, 
8 iid. 9 Ibid., 516, 10 Lodge, 60. ul WVorks, 1, 404. 


32 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


altogether over the state governments and reduce them to an utter 
subordination, dividing the large States into simpler districts.’ ? 
Such were the ideas urged by Hamilton in the forceful five-hour 
speech which Gouverneur Morris thought the most brilliant in- 
tellectual exhibition he had ever witnessed. After this exhaustive 
exposition, he took but little part. Toward the close he explained 
his comparative silence: ‘He had been restrained from entering 
into the discussions by his dislike of the scheme of government in 
general.’? This distaste did not diminish as the Convention closed 
its labors, and he accepted the Constitution in the end ‘as better 
than nothing.’? His motive for joining in recommending it to the 
people is conclusively shown in his last Convention utterance: 
‘No man’s ideas are more remote from the plan than my own are 
known to be; but is it possible to deliberate between anarchy and 
convulsion on one side, and the chance of good to be expected from 
the plan on the other?’ 

Nor did he ever lose faith in his own plan, or gain confidence in 
the Constitution which was adopted.’ Just before retiring from the 
Cabinet he avowed himself a monarchist who had “no objections to | 
a trial being made of this thing of a republic.’® Two years before 
his death he wrote bitterly to Morris of his support of a Constitu- 
tion in which he had never had faith “from the beginning,’ in 
which he described it as ‘a frail and worthless fabric.’7 And the 
night of his death, when his bosom friend and confidant was medi- 
tating the funeral oration he was to deliver on the steps of Trinity 
Church, he wrote in his diary, “He was in principle opposed to 
republican and attached to monarchical government, but then his 
opinions were generally known and have been long and loudly 
proclaimed. His share in the forming of our Constitution must be 
mentioned, and his unfavorable opinion cannot therefore be con- 
cealed.’® | 

If, however, he was a tremendous factor in making any Consti- 
tutional Convention possible, he was to be even more essential in 
securing the ratification of the document he disliked — and it is 
here that he rises to the pinnacle of patriotic statesmanship, and 


1 Gordy, 1, 70. 2 Works, 1, 417. 8 Ibid. 

Works, 1, 420. 5 Lodge, 62-63. 

¢ Statement to Tench Coxe quoted by Jefferson, Works of Jefferson, Ford, 1, 338, 
¥ Letter to G. Morris, Works, x, 425, 8 Morris, Diary, 11, 456. 


HAMILTON: A PORTRAIT 33 


earns the eternal gratitude of the Republic. When on that sum- 
mer day, on a packet floating lazily down the Hudson, he subor- 
dinated his personal preferences to the public good, and sat down 
to the writing of the first number of ‘The Federalist,’ he reached 
the very acme of his greatness. Had he done nothing else, his fame 
would have been as eternal as the Nation he helped to make. 
Thus does he take his rightful place among the greatest nation- 
builders of all time. 


VIII 


The qualities of strength and weakness accounting for the suc- 
cesses and failures of his political leadership are easily found in an 
analysis of his character. As is true of most genius, his was three 
fourths hard work. From his earliest boyhood he had learned the 
value ofsystem. Nothing was permitted to disturb the programme 
by which he regulated his days and nights. We may surmise that 
he was his own most relentless taskmaster from the rules he wrote 
for the guidance of his favorite son. This almost monastic sched- 
ule denotes the system by which he governed his own life.1 He 
never completed his education, and the exactions of politics and 
his profession never made him a stranger to his library. Here, 
surrounded by his family, he ministered to an insatiable mind. 
Never tiring of the classics, he kept pace with the printing-press, 
and Mrs. Church rummaged about the book-stalls of London to 
supply him with all the new worth-while publications. Thus the 
“Wealth of Nations’ was in his hands as soon after its appearance 
as a boat could cross the sea.?, His manner of study was intensive, 
absorbing, and he fairly lashed his mind and memory to their 
allotted tasks. Walking the floor while reading and studying, it 
was a comment of his friends that with equal exertion he could 
have walked from one end of the country to the other.’ 

Quite as remarkable as the intensity of his application was his 
abnormal capacity for sustained exertion. He thought nothing of 
_ sitting over a paper ‘until the dawn dimmed his candles.’* Talley- 
_ rand’s comment on finding lights in his office in the early morning 
is famous. It was not unusual for him to ponder a problem long 


1 Works, x, 480. 2 Intimate Life, 75. 
* Life, by son, 1, 398. 4 Parton’s Jefferson, 358, 


34 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


and earnestly until he had thought it through, then to retire to 
sleep regardless of the hour of the night, and after a while to arise, 
refresh himself with a cup of strong coffee, seat himself at his table, 
and work on with great rapidity for six, seven, or eight hours with- 
out rest. The resulting product of his pen was so perfect, we are 
assured, such was his felicity of expression, that it seldom required 
revision.? — @ 

This tenacity was one of the factors in his leadership. He was 
never a fair-weather fighter. Opposition only whetted his appe- 
tite for battle. Nor was he easily discouraged. Explaming to a 
friend who wished to carry the news to New York of the situation 
in the Poughkeepsie Convention, that the members stood two to 
one against the ratification of the Constitution, he concluded with 
grim emphasis: ‘Tell them the Convention shall never rise until 
the Constitution is adopted.’? 

Along with this tenacity, he had an illimitable moral courage 
which made it easy for him to fight for a cause without counting 
thecost. The real Hamilton is seen in his defense of the persecuted 
Tories at the close of the Revolution; in his fighting his way } 
through a mob eager for the blood of the Tory president of Co- 
lumbia College to hold it at bay with his indignant eloquence; in 
his letter to Jay against the destruction of the notorious Rivington 
Press by a mob.? This reverence for law and the constituted — 
authority was the mainspring of his political character, and he al- 
ways had the moral courage to stand for both when cowardice 
would have recommended compromise. 

To these qualities must be added another which gave character > 
to his leadership — he was personally honest. Called to a station © 
where he might easily have enriched himself, as did many of his 
friends, he retired to private life poorer than when he entered the 
public service. Small wonder that T alleyrand was astounded at 
such disinterestedness and restraint. There was no affectation in 
his letter lamenting his inability to succor some immigrants from 
France. ‘I wish I was a Croesus; I might then afford solid consola- 
tion to these children of adversity, and how delightful it would be 
to do so. But now, sympathy, kind words, and occasionally a din- 


1 Familiar Letiers, 236-37. 2 Oliver, 177-78, 
3 Works, x, 3; letter to King. 


| 


HAMILTON: A PORTRAIT 85 


ner are all that I can contribute.’ And at the time he wrote great 
fortunes had been built on the financial system he had created. So 
impeccable was he in this regard that his great political protagonist, 
writing an estimate of his character in the calm of his closet, re- 
corded him as ‘disinterested, honest and honorable in all private 
transactions.’1 Profound as a thinker, exhaustive as a student, 
moving in eloquence, powerful with the pen, logical in his reason- 
ing, constructive in his methods, tenacious in the advancement of 
his plans, possessed of the courage of his convictions, personally 
honest in public and private action, he possessed qualities of leader- 
ship that drew high-minded men about, and to, him. But he un- 
happily had the weakness of his strength that was to operate disas- 
trously upon his political fortunes. It is impossible to understand 
his ultimate failure as a leader without a reference to his tempera- 
mental deficiencies. 


Ix 


' As a party leader he was singularly lacking in tact, offensively 


opinionated,? impatient and often insulting to well-meaning 
mediocrity, and dictatorial. He did not consult — he directed. 
He did not conciliate — he commanded. In the Cabinet he was to 
offend Jefferson early because Hamilton ‘could not rid himself of 
the idea that he was really the prime minister.’* It was not diplo- 
matic to order Adams back to his post of duty in Philadelphia in 
the manner of one addressing a subordinate. Nor was it consider- 
ate to write to McHenry, who adored him, and was doing the best 
his limited ability would permit: “Pray take a resolution adequate 
to the emergency and rescue the credit of your department.’ 4 
These outbursts of impatience and this intolerance of weakness 
were forgiven by the strong, but treasured against him by smaller 
and more envious minds, and the time was to come when, with his 
field marshals loyal, he was to have few colonels and captains, and 
practically no privates. He was a failure in the management of 
men, and only his superior genius made it possible for him to demi- 
nate so long. 

There was much of egotism and some vanity behind this dicta- 


1 Jefferson’s Anas, 1, 180. 2 Morris, Diary, 11, 456, 
* Lodge, 156. 4 Works, x, 354. 


36 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON, 


torial disposition. This was inherent and incurable. The lowli- 
ness of his origin, the phenomenal rapidity of his rise, the homage 
properly paid him for the brilliancy of his youthful efforts with 
voice, pen, and sword, all tended to convince him of his superior- 
ity. No one knew or lamented his egotism more than men who 
loved him. Morris went weeping from his death-bed to write his 
intimate opinion in his diary that he was ‘vain and opinionated.’ ? 
Cabot, who clung to him like a lover, wrote him frankly: ‘I am 
bound to tell you that you are accused by respectable men of ego- 
tism.? A descendant and biographer concedes his vanity, taking 
sssue with Hamilton’s son who had foolishly, but naturally, denied 
it in his biography.’ His self-sufficiency 1s evident in his letter to 
Laurens: ‘It is my desire to preserve myseli free from particular 
attachments, and to keep my happiness independent of the ca- 
prices of others.’* But were we without these confessions from his 
friends, we should find them in his letters. What more amazing 
and amusing than his letter to Schuyler explaining with gusto and 
some swagger his quarrel with Washington.> Even at the age of 
twenty-three and while serving in a secretarial capacity to one of 
the foremost figures of all time, he was placing himself on an 
equality at least with Washington and writing glibly of “what we 
owed to each other.’ This spirit of self-exaltation was to drive 
many of the minor leaders of his party from him, and to lead him, 
in the end, to the supreme folly of his pamphlet attack on Adams 
which was hopelessly to cripple, if not completely destroy, his 
influence. : 

Even more serious than his flamboyant egotism was his queer 
lack of judgment in the handling of men. It was an irreparable 
blunder to force the election of his father-in-law to the Senate 
from New York over Chancellor Livingston who had superior 
claims. It was a temporary triumph that drove one of the most 
powerful families in the State into the ranks of his enemies. Only 
the most execrable taste can pardon the undignified writing of 
anonymous attacks on a colleague of the Cabinet.’? His blunder in © 
the case of the Schuyler election could be excused by his lack of 


1 Morris, Diary, 11, 456. 4 Life, by son, I, 236. 6 Lodge, 81. 
2 Cabot, 298-300. 5 [bid., 233. 1 [bid., 144. 
8 Intimate Life, 48. 


Ht 


HAMILTON: A PORTRAIT 37 


political experience, but his most sympathetic biographer admits 
that ‘middle age instead of ripening his judgment, warped it.”! 
His was a nature of eternal youth, and in many respects the in- 
discretions of boyish exuberance cursed him to the end. 

If these personal weaknesses were to weaken him with the lead- 
ers of the second rank, his unpopularity with the rank and file was 
to come from his lack of sympathy for, and understanding of, the 
American spirit. No one realized it more than he. In justice it 
must be said that he honestly tried to suppress his doubts of Amer- 
ica; but in moments of depression he burst forth with expressions 
that bear the marks of long incubation. ‘Am I a fool — a roman- 
tic Quixote — or is there a constitutional defect in the American 
mind?’ he wrote King. ‘Were it not for yourself and a few others 
T would adopt the reveries of De Paux, as substantial truths, and 
could say with him that there is something in our climate which 
belittles every animal, human or brute.’? And toward the close of 


his life he wrote Morris: ‘Every day proves to me more and more 


that this American world was not made for me. You, friend Mor- 
ris, are a native of this country, but by genius an exotic. You mis- 
take if you fancy that you are more of a favorite than myself, or 
that you are in any sort upon a theatre suited to you.’? This touch 
of the exotic, of which he himself was painfully conscious, was not 
lost upon his political enemies. ‘Thus ignorant of the character of 
this nation, of Pennsylvania, and of his own city and State of New 
York, was Alexander Hamilton,’ wrote Adams.* But it was left 
for another to ‘discover the real secret of his confusion as to the 
American character — he had never known the spirit, or had the 
training, of the New England town meeting.’ A marvelous 
genius, he thought in terms of world politics at a time when Amer- 
ica was creating a new spirit and system of her own. It was not to 
weaken his work as the creator of credit, but it was to dim his 
vision as an American leader. 


x 
If he possessed traits that made him thoroughly hated by some, 


he had other qualities that bound his friends to him with bonds of 


1 Oliver, 40. 2 Works, x, 90-91. 8 Thid., x, 425-26. 
‘ Works, x, 123-26; letter to Lloyd. 5 Parton’s Jefferson, 355. 


38° JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


steel. Ele commanded affection because he was himself affection- 
ate. His letters to his wife were uniformly tender and playful. He 
was idolized by his children. His comrades in the army loved him 
because he not only shared their hardships, but at times helped 
them to necessities out of his own all but empty pockets. He was 
sensitive to the sufferings of many refugees in Philadelphia and 
New York, and he would often direct his wife to send money and 
delicacies to the women and children.! We have many instances of 
his generosity, like his attempt to spare André the humiliation of 
the scaffold, and his letter to Knox protesting against the execu- 
tion of British officers in retaliation for the murder of an American.” 
Among the young French officers he was idolized because of his 
merry disposition and the cleverness and brilliancy of his conversa- 
tion. While prone to hold aloof from the mass, he was a ‘good fel- 
low’ among those whom he considered his social equals. In social 
assemblies of both sexes he fairly sparkled with boyish enthu- 
siasm.? In stag affairs, where he was immensely popular, we may 
be sure that he was nothing of a prude. It is not of record that he 
often drank to excess, but like most men of his time he loved his 
wine, and we have it on the best authority that he sometimes took 
a wee bit too much.‘ On these convivial occasions he could always 
be prevailed upon to sing his one and only song: 


‘We're going to war, and when we die 
We'll want a man of God near by, 
_ So bring your Bible and follow the drum.’ 


His one serious weakness was an inordinate fondness for women 
which was to involve him in the one serious scandal of his career. 
It was McHenry who wrote to Pickering, another friend: ‘Far be 
it from me to attempt to palliate his pleasures, the indulgence in 
which Mr. Hamilton himself publicly lamented.’® It was Otis 
who wrote of his ‘liquorish flirtation’ with a married woman at a 
fashionable dinner party.’ It was Lodge who, in touching on his 
overpowering passions, refers to his ‘relations, which had an un- 
enviable notoriety.’? It is Oliver who says that ‘his private short- 


1 Intimate Life, 46. 2 Works, 1x, 256-58. 8 Familiar Letters, 236-37, 
4 Morison’s Otis (to Mrs. Otis), 1, 141-43. 5 Cabot, 204-05. 
6 Morison’s Otis, 1, 141. 1 Lodge, 272, 


HAMILTON: A PORTRAIT 39 


comings cannot be denied,’! and that ‘in private life Hamilton 
was not always vigilant.’? It is the historian of ‘The Republican 
Court’ who records that ‘it is true that Hamilton was something of 
a roué.’® And it was reserved for a descendant to remind us of the 
story of the alleged relations with the celebrated Madame Jumel, 
who, in old age, made an unsuccessful attempt to live with Aaron 
Burr,* and of the gossip, which he discredits, that his relations 
with his sprightly sister-in-law, Mrs. Church, were more tender 
than they should have been.’ This same descendant, writing with 
professional authority, explains these moral delinquencies on the 
theory that, like other men of genius and great intelligence, he was 
prone to ‘impulsively plunge into the underworld in obedience to 
some strange promptings of their lower nature.’ ® 

And yet, such are the strange inconsistencies of the tempera- 
mental — nothing could have been more beautiful than his home 
life. His endearing traits are evident in the passionate devotion of 
all who knew the Hamilton of the hearth. If the ties that bound 
Angelica Church to him were not more tender than they should 
have been, her letters indicate something akin to love.’ His wife, 
who must have suffered tortures over the confessions of the Rey- 
nolds pamphlet, clung to him with a faith born perhaps of an under- 
standing of how much he must have resisted. If he sometimes 
broke his vows, there can be no doubt that the shrine of his heart 
was at his hearth. 

‘Colonel Beckwith tells me that our dear Hamilton writes too 
much and takes no exercise, and grows fat,’ wrote Angelica Church 
to Mrs. Hamilton from London. ‘I hate both the word and the 
thing, and I desire you to take care of his health, and his good 
looks.”* Here we have the suggestion of another frailty which 
makes all the more notable the intensity of his sustained efforts 
and the magnitude of his achievements — the delicacy of his 
health. The first, and possibly the last, medical service rendered 
by McHenry on becoming a member of Washington’s military 
family was to prescribe for Hamilton and make suggestions as to 
his diet. Early in the war he who was never robust contracted a 
malarial infection from which he suffered every summer through- 


1 Oliver, 76. 2 Ibid., 381. 8 Griswold, 173. 
4 Intimate Life, 55. 5 Tbid., 56. 8 Iind., 60. 7 [bid., 259. 8 Jiid., 73. 


40 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


out his life.! His correspondence is sprinkled throughout with 
references to his health.2 While in no sense an invalid, the magni- 
tude and multiplicity of his labors despite a chronic physical dis- 
ability measure the power of mind over matter and indicate 
something of his unyielding will. 


XI 


In view of the sincere or simulated interest in religion shown by 
Hamilton where political interests were involved, it would be 
interesting to know just what he thought and felt. The records 
here are slight. During his youth he passed through the period of 
religious exaltation not uncommon in the average life. Not only 
was he attentive to public worship, but he prayed fervently and 
with eloquence in the seclusion of his room.’ About this time he 
wrote a hymn, ‘A Soul Entering into Bliss,’ which is said to have 
had some literary merit. We hear no more concerning his religious 
fervor for many years until he pretended, if he did not feel, an 
intense indignation against the revolutionary reaction aimed at 
the church establishment in France. He was shocked that ‘equal 
pains have been taken to copra the morals as to extinguish 
the religion of the country.’® 

A few years more, and, with the fall of his party, he outlined to 
Bayard a ‘Plan of Conduct’ for Federalists with a view to its 
rehabilitation, and proposed an association to be denominated 
‘The Christian Constitutional Society,’ having for its objects ‘the 
support of the Christian Religion’ and ‘the support of the Con- 
stitution.’® This hints strongly of the Old World idea of the union 
of Church and State. In Connecticut the clergy had been the 
shock troops of Federalism, and it is quite possible that the politi- 
cal advantage of an alliance between the Church and his party 
appealed to Hamilton. 

At any rate, he was a member of no church. One of his descend- 
ants assures us that ‘he was a man of earnest, simple faith, quite 
unemotional in this respect, so far as display was concerned, but 
'. 1 Intimate Lrfe, 17. 

2 Works, v, 61 (to Washington); x, 256 (to William Smith); x, 275 (to King); x, $43 (te 
Pickering). 


8 Life, by son, reminiscences of Troup, 1, 10. 4 Thid, 
5 Works, v1, 276. 6 [bid., x, 432-37. 


HAMILTON: A PORTRAIT 41 


his belief was very strong’! Strong as it was, it never led him to 
the altar. 

Leaving his idol’s death-bed, Oliver Wolcott wrote his wife 
that ‘Colonel H. in late years expressed his conviction of the 
truths of the Christian Religion, and his desire to receive the 
Sacrament — but no one of the clergy who have yet been con- 
sulted will administer it.’? At length, life ebbing away, a bishop 
consented after being earnestly solicited the second time. Thus in 
his dying hour, Hamilton declared: ‘It has for some time past been 
the wish of my heart, and it was my intention to take an early 
opportunity of uniting myself to the church.’ The nafural de- 
duction from the meager information we have is that his intensive 
political and professional activities and consuming ambitions gave 
him little time to meditate on religion. He certainly never gave it 
the consideration of his greatest political opponent whom his 
party attacked as an enemy of Christianity. But he used the 
Church, whenever possible, to advance his political views — 
and with effect. 

Quite as problematical as his religious feeling was his attitude 
toward Washington. It was the policy of the Federalists to 
capitalize politically the popularity of the man of Mount Vernon, 
and they succeeded, as we shall find, to a marked degree. Even so, 
some of Hamilton’s most partial biographers* have commented on 
the absence of any deep affection between the two, and Dr. Ham- 
ilton is not convincing with his observation that his ancestor 
signed his letters to Washington, ‘Very affectionately.’*4 As a 
matter of fact none of his letters to Washington denote real affec- 
tion. This would be more impressive, however, but for the singu- 
lar absence of the note of affection in all his political correspond- 
ence. But in one of his letters we find the very opposite of either 
affection or admiration. This was his letter to General Schuyler 
on the occasion of Hamilton’s withdrawal from Washington’s 
military family, and it does not speak well for the reliability of his 
son’s biography that he deliberately mutilated the letter. It was 
in this that he wrote that he had found his chief ‘neither remark- 
able for delicacy or good temper’ and complained of his ‘self love.’ 


1 Intimate Life, 334. 2 Thid., 406. 
* Oliver and Sumner, 4 Intimate Life, 261. 


42 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Here we have the confession that ‘for three years past I have felt 
no friendship for him and have professed none.’ ! 

In his letter to Lear, the secretary, when Washington died he 
probably came perilously near to summing up his attitude in a 
sentence: ‘I have been much indebted to the kindness of the Gen- 
eral, and he was an Aegis very essential to me.’ And then, the sig- 
nificant postscript: ‘In whose hands are his papers gone? Our 
_ very confidential situation will not permit this to be a point of in- 
difference to me.’? 


Such a man was Hamilton, a Colossus, brilliant, fascinating, 
daring, and audacious — a constructive statesman of the highest 
order, a genius of the first rank, with all the strength and the weak- 
nesses of genius. Such the man who sat down at the mahogany 
desk to write the documents that were to give credit to a nation 
and a programme to a party. 

1 Works, 1x, 232-37. _ 2 Ibid., x, 356-57. 


CHAPTER III 
HAMILTON IN THE SADDLE 


I 


HERE was quite enough in the picture of the handsome, pen- 

niless Hamilton, at the age of thirty-two, striding upon the 
national scene with the air of a conqueror to undertake the solution 
of the problem on which the existence of the young Republic 
depended, to appeal to the popular imagination. The mystery 
and romance of his history, the dash in his manner, the shimmer of 
his genius, interested all and fascinated many of his contempo- 
raries. The audacious gayety with which he faced his task im- 
parted a feeling of confidence to those who did not know, as many 
did, just what was in his mind. He set to work with an enthusiasm 
that smacked of inspiration, for it was a task to his taste. 

With the startling effect of a magician at his tricks he created 
the machinery of his complicated department, selected his assist- 
ants with discrimination, trained them with meticulous care in 
their duties, outlined his plans for revenue immediately required, 
and sat down with joy to the preparation of his ‘Report on the 
Public Credit,’ which was to proclaim the public faith and estab- 
lish the Nation’s credit. 

The mere presence of this youthful figure at the mahogany desk 
commanded confidence. Here was a man who was primarily 
interested in the rights of property, who believed in the sanctity 
of contracts and had the courage of his convictions. Even as he 
was writing his ‘Report,’ he loomed large as the man of the hour. 
His close associates foresaw the nature of his recommendations. 
The mercantile and financial interests plumed themselves upon a 
triumph. Within a month after his appointment a contemporary 
rhymester put in verse the counting-room conception of the man: 

*... young Hamilton’s unshaken soul 
The wayward hosts of anarchy control — 


And while the Senate with his accents rung 
A full conviction followed from his tongue.’ } 


1 Daily Advertiser, October 9, 1789. 





“ 


AA JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


His plans, given in confidence to some, were soon whispered among 
the politicians and the merchants of New York, Philadelphia, and 
Boston, and the market price of public securities in the cities rose 
fifty per cent two months before Congress convened. 

It was not until in early January that the ‘Report’ was read in 
House and Senate. His wish to present it personally was denied, 
not by his political enemies as his partial biographers contend, 
but by the supporters of his plan.! In the galleries of the House 
eager speculators were closely packed. They overflowed and filled 
the lobbies. Some were drawn by mere curiosity, some were the 
original creditors who had waited long for their reward, but the 
greater number were speculators, who, in anticipation of such a 
recommendation, had bought freely of the skeptical holders at 
ridiculously low prices. Not a few of these poured forth into Wall 
Street at the conclusion with the exhilarating knowledge that a 
fortune was within their grasp. 

In the Senate the ‘Report’ was heard in secret and in ‘awful 
silence,’ for the elder statesmen met behind doors closed and locked. 
Most of these listened with approval, but the rheumatic Maclay, 
who had been puzzled for some time with ‘the extraordinary rise. 
in public securities,’ wrote that night in his journal that Hamilton 
“recommends indiscriminate funding, and, in the style of the British 
Minister, has sent down his bill.’ There were some complaints 
that ‘a committee of speculators in certificates could not have 
formed it more to their advantage.’ In truth, ‘it occasioned many 
serious faces,’ and Maclay himself was ‘struck of a heap.’? But 
the prevalent note was one of jubilation. In New York, enthu- 
siasm in the coffee-houses; in Boston, ‘great applause’;? in other 
commercial cities, Philadelphia, Charleston, Baltimore, approba- 
tion, with reprobation for objections. 

All men of honor sympathized with the purpose of discharging 
the debt. The repudiationists were among the ignorant and the 
vicious. Few at the moment found fault with the funding system, — 
though some would have preferred a speedy liquidation through | 
the sale of the public lands. Then — suddenly — a low murmur 


1 Gerry and Clymer, both supporters of the Report, objected. Annals, January 9, 1790. 
2 Maclay, 177. 3’ Writings, J. Q. Adams, 1, 49. 
* Connecticut Gazette, February 19, 1790. 


HAMILTON IN THE SADDLE 45 


of protest, followed by acrimonious attacks. Thousands of the 
original creditors had been ‘swindled’ out of their certificates for a 
song — were these, who rendered Revolutionary services, to be 
taxed to ensure exorbitant profits to the speculators? Why should 
the Federal Government assume the debts contracted by the 
separate States — debts unevenly distributed? And what was the 
purpose of the proposal that the Government should be prohibited 
from paying more than two per cent of the principal a year? The 
indignation of the insurgents, at first a glimmer, became a flame. 
The greater part of the certificates were in the hands of the pro- 
sperous who had taken advantage of the necessities of the original 
holders — Revolutionary soldiers, small farmers, hard-pressed 
country merchants. The funding system would tax all the people 
to pay to the rich a hundred cents on the dollar for evidence of 
debts that had cost them fifteen and twenty. With the people 
taxed to pay the interest — it was proposed to perpetuate the 
debt. Thus, for generations, perhaps, as many reasoned, the 
Government would operate for the cnrichment of the few already 
rich, and the masses would pay the piper. 

Had Hamilton been disposed to frankness, he would have 
smiled his acknowledgment of the charge. One of his biographers 
has conceded that through this system he hoped to ‘array pro- 
perty on the side of the Government,’ by giving it a financial in- 
terest in the Government, and ‘to assure to the property of the 
country a powerful influence upon the Government.’! Having 
‘been unable to introduce a class influence into the Constitution 
by limiting the suffrage... with a property qualification,’ he 
hoped through his financial system to accomplish his purpose in 
another way.” | 

There was nothing diabolical in the plan — coming from one 
who looked upon the masses as lawless and unfit for self-govern- 
ment. His obsession was a strong, stable government — and to 
sustain it he required the interested devotion of the propertied 
class. The astonishing thing is that the comparatively crude 
Maclay from the wilds of Pennsylvania and the leather-lunged 
James Jackson from sparsely settled Georgia should have caught 
the full significance of it all before it dawned on Jefferson and 

1 Lodge, 90-91. 3 Ibid. 


46 ' JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Madison. The latter thought the ‘Report’ ‘well digested and 
illustrated,’ and ‘supported by very able reasoning,’ but after 
a while he, too, was depressed with the injustice to the original 
creditors who ‘were most instrumental in saving their country,’ 
and concluded there was something ‘radically wrong in suffering 
those who rendered a bona fide consideration to lose seven eighths 
of their dues, and those who had no particular merit toward their 
country to gain seven or eight times as much as they advanced.’? 


II 


Meanwhile, speculation was manifesting itself with incredible 
audacity and mendacity. The greater part of the securities in the 
hands of original creditors were in the hands of soldiers, farmers, 
and merchants in the remote interior. To most of these, they had 
come to mean so much worthless paper. No telegraph could flash 
the news into the back country of Georgia and North Carolina 
that Congress was about to legislate to par the promises to pay. 
Weeks or months would pass before the proceedings in New York 
could be known and comprehended by holders of the paper living 
in the woods of the Carolinas or on the banks of the Savannah. 
Poor, and mostly ignorant, they had no correspondents in the 
coffee-houses to write them of the activities at Federal Hall; and 
even if they had, it required weeks for a letter to reach them. 

But members of Congress knew what to expect — for they were 
the actors in the drama; and their friends, the capitalists and 
merchants of the cities, knew — for they had been informed. The 
unscrupulous and adventurous soldiers of fortune on the scene 
comprehended the opportunity at a glance. The day after the 
‘Report’ was read, the city buzzed with the gossip of the specula- 
tors. One Senator, making calls in the congressional circle, found 
it almost the sole topic of conversation. He heard that Robert 
Morris of the Senate, who had been consulted by Hamilton, ‘must 
be deep in it, for his partner... had one contract for $40,000 
worth.’ It was whispered that ‘General Heister had brought over © 
a sum of money for Mr. Morris for this business.’ Senator Lang- 
don, it was noted, was living with a Mr. Hazard ‘who is an old and 
intimate friend of Mr. Morris,’ and he admitted that he had ‘fol- 

1 Madison’s Writings (letter to Pendleton), 1, 507-09. 


' HAMILTON IN THE SADDLE 47 


lowed buying certificates for some time past.’ ‘Ah,’ said the visit- 
ing Senator, ‘so you are one of the happy few who have been let in 
on the secret’ — and Mr. Hazard seemed abashed. It was under- 
stood that Representative Fitzsimons of Philadelphia was like- 
wise concerned in the business. 

Four days after the ‘Report’ was read, ‘expresses with very 
large sums of money on their way to North Carolina for purposes 
of speculation in certificates’ splashed and bumped over the 
wretched winter roads, the drivers lashing the straining horses. 
Two fast-sailing vessels, chartered by a member of Congress who 
had been an officer in the war, were ploughing the waters south- 
ward on a similar mission — and this scandalous proceeding was to 
be mentioned frequently in the subsequent debates. ‘I really 
fear,’ wrote Maclay, ‘the members of Congress are deeper in this 
business than any others.’! Whether they were deeper or not, they 
were deep enough, and numerous enough to hold the balance of 
power in the body that legislated the certificates to par. These 
ranged from Robert Morris, the chief legislative agent of Hamilton 
in the Senate, to Fisher Ames, who was his most eloquent defender 
in the House.? In later years Jefferson was to record in justice to 
Ames that his speculative activities had been greatly exaggerated 
and that he had acted as an agent in the enterprises of his Boston 
friends, Gore and Mason.? 

So thoroughly did this money-madness take possession of the 
minds of men that even the puritanic John Quincy Adams was to 
write his father, without a homily, that by September of 1790, 
Christopher Gore, the richest lawyer in Massachusetts, and one of 
the strongest Bay State members of Hamilton’s machine, had 
“made an independent fortune in speculation in the public funds’; 
and that other leaders of the bar‘ had ‘successfully engaged in 
speculation’ by playing at ‘that hazardous game with moneys 
deposited in their hands’ by clients at a distance. They took the 
chance of becoming ‘masters of sums to an equal amount before 


1 Maclay, 179. The member of Congress who sent the vessels was Jeremiah Wadsworth 
_ of Connecticut. 
2 Professor C. A. Beard makes a conclusive case eee both in his Economic Origins of 
Jeffersonian Democracy. 

3’ Works of Jefferson, 1, 35%. 

4 Mr. Amory, H. G. Otis, and William Wetmore. 


48 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON | 


they have been called upon for payment.’! Maclay thought ‘there 
is no room to doubt but that a connection is spread over the whole 
continent on this villainous business.’? Everywhere men with 
capital — and a hint — were feverishly pushing their advantage 
by preying on the ignorance of the poor. Thus, paper held for 
years by the private soldiers was coaxed from them for five, and 
even as low as two, shillings on the pound by speculators, including 
leading members of Congress, who knew that provision for the 
redemption of the paper had been made. 

In all this, Hamilton had no part and no responsibility beyond 
having made indiscreet disclosures of which his friends availed 
themselves, and through buying and selling through his agents 
in New York and Philadelphia for his brother-in-law.2 Just how 
he viewed the scandalous proceedings in the earlier stages we do 
not know. They were not without defense from his supporters. 
The obsequious John Fenno took notice of the gossip with a de- 
fense of speculation in the ‘Gazette.’ Were not moneyed men ‘the 
props of the infant credit of the United States?’4 The dark insin- 


uations of the gossips, the criticism of the ‘rabble,’ we may be 


sure caused Hamilton no concern. Surveying the field at the be- 
ginning of the battle, he must have been content. He saw the 
financiers, the commercial interests of the large centers, including 
the speculators, enlisted under his banner. The influential Society 
of the Cincinnati, composed of Revolutionary officers, men of 
means who had been able to hold on to their paper, gave dignity to 
his cause. With its compact organization in every State, and its 
system of correspondence, it was an engine of tremendous power. 
The social and intellectual circles were flying his flag. He looked 
upon his work and called it good. 


III 


With the first discussion in the House, it was apparent that 


speculation was to play a conspicuous part in the debates. The 
speculators packed the galleries, overflowed into the lobby, caus- 


ing the complacent Theodore Sedgwick of Massachusetts, himself 


1 Writings of J. Q. Adams, 1, 56-59. 2 Maclay, 177-78. 
* Beard’s Economic Interpretation, 104-12. 
* Gazette of the United States, ‘Common Sense,’ January 30, 1790. 


“HAMILTON IN THE SADDLE 49 


a speculator, to insist that the ‘ardent expectations of the people 
on this subject want no other demonstration than the numerous 
body of citizens assembled within these walls.’ The effect was 
different on the pugnacious Jackson of Georgia. ‘Since this Re- 
port has been read,’ he shouted, with a contemptuous glance at 
the eager gallery,‘ the spirit of speculation .. . has arisen and been 
cherished by people who had access to information the Report con- 
tained, that would have made a Hastings blush to have been 
connected with, though long inured to preying on the vitals of his 
fellow man. Three vessels, sir, have sailed within a fortnight from 
this port freighted for speculation.” 

The unctuous Sedgwick was melting suavity. Speculation'within 
reasonable bounds was not bad, but action should be taken with all 
possible speed to stop it; and the troublesome Jackson returned to 
the attack — this time on New York City. He wished to God 
Congress had met in the woods and out of the neighborhood of a 
populous town. The gallant veterans, driven by economic neces- 
sity to the wilderness, were being robbed by these speculators of 
the pittance a grateful country had bestowed. Since the assump- 
tion of State debts was proposed, why not postpone action until 
the various legislatures could express the sentiment of the States? 
“Then these men may send out other vessels to countermand their 
former orders; and perhaps we may yet save the distant inhabit- 
ants from being plundered by these harpies.’? 

This line of attack had not been anticipated, and Hamilton was 
not the man to take anything for granted. His well-groomed 
figure was seen moving nervously about the lobbies of Federal 
Hall, within a few days after the commencement of the debate. 
One of his enemies observed that he ‘spent most of his time run- 
ning from place to place among the members.’® In the evenings he 
gathered his more influential supporters about him at his home. 
At his table he brought his most seductive charms to bear upon the 
doubting. Time was all-important and indefinite delay might be 
fatal. ) 

With the thunder of Jackson’s ugly charges reverberating 
through the streets, taverns, coffee-houses, Hamilton was ‘moving 
heaven and earth for his funding system.’ The commercial in- 

1 Annals, January 28, 1790. 2 [bid. 8 Maclay, February 1, 1790. 


50 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


terests and the members of the Cincinnati hastened to join the 
lobby, which began to seek out the wavering or the doubtful in 
their lodging-houses. A fashionable minister found his way to the 
quarters of Speaker Muhlenberg and Senator Maclay to extol the 
policies of the dynamic young Secretary, and ‘argued as if he had 
been in the pulpit.’ Time, too, for a redoubling of effort, for there 
were rumors that Madison, the strongest man in the House, had 
been unpleasantly impressed with the fast-sailing vessels and the 
expresses jolting over the roads southward. A bitter attack had 
appeared in one of the papers which gossip ascribed to the popular 
George Clinton.! 

In the House — still harping were the foes on speculation, 
when with a benevolent expression Sedgwick rose with saccharine 
urbanity to regret the vice of speculation, and declare himself 
“totally disinterested,’ albeit he was financially concerned. It was 
only his distress over speculation that admonished him to speedy 
action to minimize the evil. It was really unfortunate that so 
much heat had been engendered. After all, were not ‘a great and 
respectable body of our citizens creditors of the United States?’ It 
would be tragic were these animosities to create ‘factions among 
the people.’ 

‘A danger there?’ bellowed Jackson, the incorrigible infant 
terrible. “Do not gentlemen think there is some danger on the 
other side? Will there not be grounds for uneasiness when the 
soldier and the meritorious citizen are called upon to pay the spec- 
ulator more than ten times the amount they ever received from 
him for their securities?’ 2 

Meanwhile the fight was spreading from Federal Hall to the 
newspapers where congressional courtesy imposed no restrictions 
on the temper. Sinister stories were finding their way into print. 
‘Several officials in conjunction with Robert Morris and wealthy 
contractors “‘were” at the bottom of this new arrangement.’ If it 
succeeded, Robert Morris would benefit $18,000,000, Jeremiah 
Wadsworth would profit $9,000,000 and Governor George Clin- 
ton would make $5,000,000.3 

It was under these conditions, with the speculators packing the 


1 Maclay, 194. 2 Annals, February 10, 1790, 
® New York Daily Advertiser, February 13, 1790. 


HAMILTON IN THE SADDLE 51 


galleries, with the lobbyists, legitimate and illegitimate, buzzing 
through the corridors, with the most amazing rumors floating 
about the streets, that James Madison, who had remained silent 
heretofore, rose in a crowded House to fire the first gun inthe 
Jeffersonian war on the financial policies of Alexander_Ham-~ 
*<eenetaeeenes 


einen ARR LIR A TITRE 


IV 


Here was a man at whom the Federalist leaders dare not sneer. 
A stranger, looking down from the gallery, would have been at a 
loss to understand the deference with which members hung upon 
his words. His personal appearance was disappointing. The short 
little man dressed in sober black, with a bald head, and a little 
protuberant in front, whose lower limbs were slight and weak,! was 
surely not meant to ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm. 
The impression of physical weakness he conveyed did belie the 
fact. In the mild blue eyes there was much to suggest the medita- 
tive philosopher, nothing to hint of the fighter. His voice was so 
weak that even in the cozy little chamber he could scarcely be 
heard.? He spoke in low tones, without gesture or excitement, al- 
most like a man communing with himself in the seclusion of his 
closet. And yet he commanded a hearing vouchsafed to few. It 
was the triumph of character.. 

Here, too, was a man with a background second to none in the 
infant Republic. An ailing body had obsessed him in youth with 
the premonition of an early death, and, feeling the futility of 
entering on any pursuit, he had sought consolation in his books. 
He not only consumed, he assimilated. He not only read, he 
thought. Thus he became something more than a learned man — 
he developed into a political philosopher ‘worthy to rank with 
Montesquieu and Locke.’* At the time he rose to propose an 
amendment to Hamilton’s plan there was not a man in America 
who was his peer in the knowledge of constitutional law or his- 
tory. Nor was there a man, either, whose support Hamilton more 
eagerly coveted. Even the jealous Ames conceded him to be ‘our 
first man,’ consoling himself for the concession with the comment 


1 Familiar Letters, 108. 
2 Gazette of the United States, April 15, 1790. 8 Fiske, 187. 


52 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


that ‘I think him too much of a book politician and too timid in 
his politics,’ and that ‘he speaks decently as to manner and no 
more.’ } 

But the ill-natured jealousy of the more ornamental Ames 
failed to take account, as most of his colleagues did, of the impor- 
tant practical use to which he had put his knowledge of the battles 
he had fought and the victories he had won. No one in either 
branch of Congress or at the head of any of the departments had 
approached his services in the framing of the Constitution. It was 
his genius that conceived the Virginia plan which became the 
basis of the agreement. At many critical junctures his speeches 
had dissipated the gathering darkness with their light. His pen, 
unknown to many at the time, had recorded the story of the 
Convention. His contributions to ‘The Federalist’ had been quite 
as important, if not so numerous, as those of Hamilton; and the 
fight he waged in the Virginia Convention for ratification was 
quite as Titanic and conclusive as that of Hamilton in New York, 
but with this difference — Hamilton was confronted by Melanc- 
thon Smith, while Madison had to cross swords with Patrick 
Henry, with the powerful George Mason and the accomplished 
Pendleton. 

He was not an orator of frills and fancies, magnetic and dra- 
matic, appealing to the passions and emotions, but he was formid- 
able in debate. In the speeches of none of his contemporaries is 
found such erudition, more driving logic, such tact and modera- 
tion of statement, or greater nobility of sentiment, fairness, jus- 
tice. If they are a bit heavy in their sobriety, the occasion called 
for something remote from theatrical frivolity. His grace was in 
his reasoning, not his rhetoric — and yet his style would have given 
him a foremost place at Saint Stephen’s. 

It is not surprising that such a man should not have been a 
favorite with the crowd. There was a diffidence in his manner, 
a formality and precision in his method, a quiet dignity in his 
bearing that discouraged familiarity. He was too absorbed in his 
work to fit in with the social festivity of his time. Only at his own 
table and among his intimates did he appear in the réle of ‘an 
incessant humorist’ and ‘keep the table in roars of laughter over 

1 Ames (letter to Minor), 1, 35. 


HAMILTON IN THE SADDLE _ 63 


his stories and his whimsical way of telling them.’! Even his letters 
read like state papers. But there were a few, greater than Ames, 
who appreciated him. These were the three most important per- 
sonages of his time — Washington, Hamilton, and Jefferson. 

Washington consulted him and made use of his pen. Hamilton 
cultivated him. Jefferson loved him as a son. His relations with 
the latter were no less than beautiful. Through many years they 
constantly interchanged visits, corresponded regularly, and trav- 
eled together whenever possible. A strikingly incongruous pair 
they must have seemed as they plodded along country roads to- 
gether, or rode to and from Philadelphia together in Jefferson’s 
carriage — the tall, thin, loose-jointed, and powerful master of 
Monticello, and the short, frail, bald-headed Madison. But the 
incongruity was in their physical appearance only, for they had 
much in common — a common sweetness of disposition, a common 
code of political principles and morals, a common liberality of 
views, and a common passion for knowledge. The older man paid 
tribute to his protégé’s qualities long after both had passed from 
active public life: his ‘habits of self-possession which placed at ready 
command the rich resources of his luminous and discriminating 
mind’; his language ‘soothing always the feelings of his adversa- 
ries by civilities and softness of expression’; his ‘pure and spotless 
virtue which no calumny has ever attempted to sully’ — all quali- 
ties that made him a congenial companion for the philosopher who 
shared them in a large degree.? Observing Jefferson’s happiness at 
the inauguration of his successor, a lady who knew them both 
_ intimately wrote what all who knew them felt: ‘I do believe father 
never loved a son more than he loves Mr. Madison.’* Butwhen 


Madison rose that cold February day to make his first attack on 


Hamilton’s programme, he acted on his own volition and without 


consultation with the man who was to | be hi his s chief. 
(7 aa Sl A SI Se ES SSR eR eens AD SiS ee a 


Vv 


" The character of Madison’s speech in favor of discrimination 
between the original holders and the purchasers of securities was 


1 First Forty Years of American Society, Family Letters of Mrs. Margaret Bayard Smith, 
61. 
2 Works of Jefferson, Ford, 1, 86. 8 Mrs. Smith, 63. 


54 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


not so open to attack as that of the impulsive and loose-thinking 
Jackson. He began in a manner to conciliate his hearers, matching 
Hamilton in his insistence on the sanctity of the debt and the neces- 
sity for its discharge. ‘The question is — to whom is the money 
due? There could be no doubt in the case of the original holders 
who had not alienated their securities. The only rival pretensions 
were those of the original holders who had assigned and the present 
holders of the assignments. 

“The former may appeal to justice,’ he said, ‘because the value 
of the money, the service or the property advanced by them has 
never been really paid to them. They may appeal to good faith, 
because the value stipulated and expected is not satisfied by the 
steps taken by the Government. The certificates put in the hands 
of the creditors, on closing their settlements with the public, were 
of less value than was acknowledged to be due; they may be con- 
sidered as having been forced on the receivers. They cannot 
therefore be adjudged an extinguishment of the debt. They may 
appeal to the motives for establishing public credit, for which 
justice and faith form the natural foundation. They may appeal 
to humanity for the sufferings of the military part of the creditors 
who never can be forgotten while sympathy is an American virtue.’ 

Admitting that the purchaser also had a claim, he proposed a 
plan designed, as he thought, to do justice to both — to pay the 
original holder in full, and, where there had been an assignment, 
the assignee to receive the highest market value and the original 
holder whatever remained over.! The plan spread consternation. 
At the Knoxes’ dinner table that night, where members of Con- 
gress and diplomats were gathered, it was almost the sole topic of 
conversation. In the coffee-houses, where the speculators gathered 
about their mugs, Madison was denounced as a dreamer and an 
enemy of public faith. The more cautious regretted the insur- 
mountable difficulties of the scheme. This was felt by Madison as 
the one legitimate argument in opposition, and writing Jefferson 
three days later he made the admission with the suggestion that 
‘they might be removed by one half the exertions that will be used 
to collect and color them.’? It was not until four days later that 
the Hamiltonian leaders attacked the plan with their heavy artil- 

1 Annals, February 11, 1790. * Madison’s Writings, 1, 507. 


HAMILTON IN THE SADDLE 55 


lery. One by one they rushed to the assault. ‘It is not pretended,’ 
cried Sedgwick, ‘that any fraud or imposition has been practiced’ 
— which is precisely what was charged. If the original holders 
lost, it was their own fault. It was too bad. He really sympa- 
thized with their misfortunes. But business was business. There 
was ‘no fraud on the part of the holder,’ echoed Laurance of New 
York — who knew that the town was humming with the charge. 
At any rate, ‘the general opinion of men of property is in favor of 
it.” No public bodies like Chambers of Commerce were against 
the Hamilton plan. As for ‘the people’ — newspapers and pam- 
phlets could not be taken as expressive of public opinion. Wil- 
liam Smith of Charleston had heard few advocates of discrimina- 
tion ‘in society.’ As for the newspapers, they appeared on both 
sides. And why so much sympathy with the original holders? 

It was reserved for Ames, whose friend Gore was getting rich on 
speculation, to take a stouter stand. Why should not ‘the seller 
who sold for a trifle be taxed to pay the purchaser?’ he asked. ‘He 
certainly ought to fare as other citizens do. If he has property, 
then the plea of necessity is destroyed; if he has none, then his 
taxes will be a mere trifle.’ And public opinion against it? Then 
‘all the more duty on Government to protect right when it may 
happen to be unpopular; that is what Government is framed to 
do.’ Away with maudlin sentiment — it was not the function of the 


_ State to ‘rob on the highway to exercise charity.’? 


Meanwhile the commercial organizations of the larger towns 
were summoned to the field against discrimination, and they 
responded — evenin Richmond. ‘It isthe natural language of the 
towns, wrote Madison, ‘and decides nothing.’? As the debate 
proceeded, Wall Street swarmed with the curious who could not 
get into the House where the speculators packed the galleries, and 
lined up deep behind the railing in the rear of the chamber. Peti- 
tions began to pour in. Passions rose. ‘I do not believe the crowd 
in the gallery consists of original holders,’ shouted one speaker with 
a contemptuous glance at the covetous group bending over the 
railing. Soldiers! ‘Poor soldiers!’ sneered Wadsworth — he who 
had sent the two fast-sailing vessels to the South — ‘I am tired of 


1 Annals, February 15,1790. _ 2 Writings (to Randolph), 1, 512., 
® White, Annals, February 16, 1790. 


56 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


hearing about the poor soldiers. Perhaps soldiers were never 
better paid in any part of the country.”! 

Two days later, Madison returned to the attack in a speech 
unusually spirited for him. Only when he had parted with his self- 
respect ‘could he admit that America ought to erect the monu- 
ments of her gratitude, not to those who saved her liberties, but to 
those who had enriched themselves on her funds.’ It was his last 
effort. He had spent himself to the utmost. A spectator entering 
the House late in the day found him ‘rather jaded.’? He had in- 
curred the hate of the Hamiltonians without having consolidated 
all the opposition in favor of his plan. 

Three days later — it was Sunday — that extreme democrat 
Senator Maclay, who was indifferent to Madison’s plan because 
opposed to funding altogether, sat down in his boarding-house and 
framed a plan of his own looking to the extinguishment of the debt 
through the sale of public lands. Having satisfied himself, he went 
forth in search of Thomas Scott, his colleague. But ‘shame to tell 
it — he a man in years and burdened with complaints — had lodged 
out and was not home yet.’ Pity that ‘a good head should be led 
astray by the inordinate lust of its concomitant parts.’ At length 
the old ‘roué’ was found, and he urged that it be submitted to 
Madison at once. 

The next day found Maclay indignantly chafing at Madison’s 
lodging-house because it was ‘a long time’ before he appeared. As 
the radical from Pennsylvania read his plan, it seemed to him that 
Madison ‘attended to no one word, being so much absorbed in his 
own ideas.’ Maclay handed him the paper, and Madison handed 
it back without glancing at it. Alas, thought the radical, ‘his pride 
seems of the kind that repels all communications.’* It was not an 
easy task to organize the forces of Democracy. 

The next day Madison’s plan was voted down. It was found 
long afterward that of the sixty-four members of the House, 
twenty-nine were security-holders. 


VI 
One thing, however, had been accomplished — the public 
interest had been awakened. The tongue of criticism hads been 
1 White, Annals, February 16, 1790. 2 Maclay, 199. 8 Ibid., February 22, 1790. 


HAMILTON IN THE SADDLE 57 


loosened. The man in the street began to hold forth. It was all 
beyond him — as problems of finance were beyond Madison him- 
self; but he could understand that a policy had been adopted that 
would be advantageous to the rich, profitable to the speculator, 
and mean loss to the common soldier. In the commercial centers 
of the cities Madison became anathema. Young Adams reported to 
his father that in Boston ‘Mr. Madison’s reputation has suffered 
from his conduct,’ albeit so respectable a character as Judge Dana 
had adopted Madison’s views.1 The immediate reaction through 
letters to the papers was so bitter that Fenno was moved to a 
homily under the caption, ‘Honor Your Rulers,’ in which he 
pointed to such outrageous derelictions as expressions of doubt 
concerning the propriety of the proceedings of Congress.? These 
expressions had gone far beyond a mere questioning of the wisdom 
of Congress. ‘A War Worn Soldier’ thought it ‘happy there is a 
Madison who fearless of the blood suckers will step forward and 
boldly vindicate the rights of the widows and orphans, the original 
creditors and the war worn soldier.’* Another ‘Real Soldier’ 
described ‘the poor emaciated soldier, hungry and naked, in many 
instances now wandering from one extreme part of the country to 
another.... But thank God there lives a Madison to propose 
justice....’4 An uglier and more pointed note was struck by ‘A 
Farmer’ in Pennsylvania. ‘Would it not be a good regulation,’ he 
- wrote, ‘to oblige every member of Congress... to lay his hand on 
his heart and to declare that he is no speculator; and that he did 
not come forward to claim for himself the price of the blood or the 
limb or the life of the poor soldier?’> Another wrote to ‘gentlemen 
who by superior wealth have monopolized the public securities’ 
that if honor and public faith called for the maintenance of the 
paper at par then, there was more occasion for it ‘when they were 
in the hands of those poor people to whom they were justly due, 
who had implicitly pinned their faith on your sheaves.’® ‘An Old 
Soldier’ recalled Washington’s pledge to see justice done the com- 
mon soldier. ‘Ample means are said to be now about to be pro- 
vided, not for their relief, but to enable eight or nine hundred per 


1Writings, J. Q. Adams, 1, 49. 2 Gazette of the United States, June 12, 1790, 
8 Centinel, February 24, 1790. 4 Jbid., March 20, 1790. 

5 Pennsylvania Gazette, copied in Maryland Gazette, February 26, 1790. 

® Boston, Independent Chronicle, March 4, 1790. 


58 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON. 


cent gain on the purchase money of the speculator.’! ‘Ah well,” 
wrote ‘A Citizen’ of Boston, ‘Madison, Jackson and others in 
favor of discrimination in funding the public debt have probably 
immortalized their memories.’ ? | 

Their letters probably reflect the talk among the workers on the 
wharves, the pioneers on the fringe of the forests, the gossips of 
the taverns. Rightly or wrongly, a spirit of resentment had been 
aroused — a feeling in the breast of many that their interests were 
being subordinated by the Government. This sentiment was to 
grow and to increase the trouble of Hamilton in the next step 
toward the adoption of his funding system, 


VII 


With the easy victory, however, the Hamiltonians entered with 
gayety upon the next step — the Assumption of the State debts — 
determined to rush it through. On the very night of the day dis- 
crimination was defeated, the Pennsylvania delegation, on the 
suggestion of Robert Morris, met at the lodgings of Represen- 
tative Fitzsimons of Philadelphia to ‘consider’ the matter of 
Assumption. One glance convinced the keen-eyed Maclay that 
the meeting was for ratification, not for consideration purposes. 
“By God,’ swore Morris, ‘it must be done!’ George Clymer, 
another of the Hamilton Reliables, bubbled with enthusiasm over 
the advantage that would accrue to Pennsylvania. Maclay was 
embarrassed by the almost affectionate comradery of some of his 
colleagues. Why should the delegation not hold weekly social 
sessions and work in harmony? Fitzsimons’s lodgings would be 
the very place to meet. Yes, agreed Morris, and they could have 
wine and oysters.® 

A few days later Muhlenberg, returning to Maclay’s lodgings 
from a levee at the presidential mansion, declared with intense 
emphasis that the State debts must be assumed — which impressed 
the suspicious Senator as ‘the language of the Court.’ 4 

But it was not to be so simple as all that. Assumption, argued 
many, would but extend the scope of the operations of the hated 
speculators. It was another move to mortgage the Government to 


1 Boston, Independent Chronicle, March 25, 1790, § Ibid., April 15. 
3 Maclay, 202. 4 Ihid., 205. 


HAMILTON IN THE SADDLE 59 


_ the capitalists. The greater part of the speculating gentry were in 


the North; they would soon accumulate all the State certificates 
of the South into their own hands and one section would be paying 
taxes to increase the fortunes of a favored class in another. 

There was another reason for the revolt of the Southerners — 
which, reversed, would have operated quite as powerfully on the 
Northerners. The States with the largest unpaid debts were in the 
North, Massachusetts with the greatest debt of all. Virginia, 
which led the opposition, had liquidated most of her debt. There 
is nothing inexplicable in the objections of the Virginians, who had 
paid their debt, to being taxed to help pay the debt of Massachu- 
setts and Connecticut. 

This was appreciated by many in the North, and a citizen of 
Stockbridge, Massachusetts, writing for a New York paper, 


thought it unfair. If the ‘leveling system’ was vicious as applied to 


men, it was quite as bad when applied to States. Then, too, ‘the 


public creditors, the most opulent part of the community, would, 
by this means, be detached from the interest of the State Goy- 


ernments and united to that of the general Government.’ This 
aimed at the annihilation of the State Governments and the 
perpetuation of the debt.1 Thus an attack began on the general 
policy of funding, taking an ugly form, appealing to class preju- 


dices. ‘A number of drones are brought into society and the in- 


dustrious bee is forced to furnish them with all the honey of its 


~ search.’ 2 


But this opposition from the unimportant meant nothing to 


_ Hamilton. In those days, and for many days to come, it was only 


necessary to know what Oliver Wolcott * said or wrote to know 
what his master thought. Writing his father about this time, Wol- 


_cott gives us sketchily the operations of Hamilton’s mind. This 


matter of assumption was connected with ‘the engine of govern- 
ment.’ Since ‘the influence of the clergy, the nobility and the 
army’ was impossible, ‘some active principle of the human mind 
can be interested in the support of the Government.’ It would 
never do to have ‘civil establishments,’ but there was an influen- 


tial class in existence — the moneyed class. They ~could-and 


I RPS TTS My Sarre a FeRAM PMN AEF ES 








1 New York Advertiser, February 20, 1790. 
* Ibid., February 22, 1790. 3 Comptroller of the Treasury. 


60 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


should be bound by interest to the general Government. What 
more ‘active principle’ of the human mind than the desire for 
wealth? And if the capitalists looked to the Federal rather than to 
the State Governments for their money, what better ‘engine of 
government’ than that? ‘For these reasons,’ wrote Wolcott, ‘I 
think the State debts should be assumed.’ True, it would make 
the debt of the United States ‘inconvenient,’ the taxes would be 
‘burdensome,’ and ‘will appear to be just only to those who be- 
lieve that the good attained is more important than the evil which 
is suffered.’ ! 

It was fear of the effect of these ‘burdensome taxes’ on the 
popularity of th ment that led some men, incltd- 
ing Madison, into opposition.?_ Some of the Hamiltonians were 
alarmed, fearing that ‘such bold politics are unfitted to... the in- 
fant resources’ of the young Republic. Every enemy of Assump- 
tion was not hostile to the central Government, but all who were — 


“er 


jealous of the sovereignty of the Statés ‘were in Opposition. Rufus 
“King; the brilliant and virile Hamiltoni: an Ieader in the Senate, 
was convinced that in New York ‘the anti-federalists think that 
the advantages to be derived to the State from the retention of 
that debt are so great and important that they stand ready to 
accede to any terms which the creditors may propose.’* About 
the same time the unreconciled Patrick Henry was writing James 
Monroe that ‘it seems to be a consistent part of a system I have 
ever dreaded,’ and that the ‘subserviency of Southern to Northern 
interests are written in Capitals on its very front.’® 
Such was the atmosphere in which the second battle began. 


VIII 


On the opening of the debate one champion of Assumption ® let 
the cat out of the bag with the statement that ‘if the general 
Government has the payment of all the debts, it must of course 
have all the revenue, and if it possesses the whole revenue, it is 
equal, in other words, to the whole power.’ ‘Yes,’ cried the irre- — 
pressible Jackson in stentorian tones, ‘if it lulls the Shays of the 


1 Gibbs, 1, 43. 2 Madison’s Writings (to Jefferson), 1, 511. j 
3 McRee, Iredell (from Senator Johnson), 11, 286; (from William R. Davie), 0, 281, note. 
4 King, 1, 385. 5 Henry, 11, 459. 6 Stone of Maryland. 


HAMILTON IN THE SADDLE 61 


North it will rouse the Sullivans of the South’ — and the fight 
was on. 

Almost immediately Assumption became confused with the 
whole system of funding, and a week after Madison had made 
his argument against the former, he was compelled to return toa 
defense of the latter, not as something he desired, but as a neces- 
sity imposed by unescapable conditions. Madison was too much 
of a statesman to be a demagogue. 

Very soon, Maclay, watching the proceedings in the House with 
ferret eyes, thought he observed ‘the rendezvousing of the crew of 
the Hamilton galley.” He found that ‘all hands are piped to 
quarters.’ The plan to force a vote on March 8th was abandoned 
toward evening, and that night he heard it was to await the ar- 
rival of Representative Vining of Delaware, and to give Hamil- 
ton time ‘to prepare him properly.”! 

There was some mystery about Vining, and wild rumors were 
afloat that some one had said that he would give the new arrival 
a thousand guineas for his vote. ‘A thousand guineas,’ snorted 
Maclay, with a twinge in his gouty knee,‘ they could get him fora 
tenth that sum.’ 

Meanwhile, there was feverish activity among Hamilton’s 
supporters in Congress and out. Government officials left their 
desks to become lobbyists. The clergy turned politicians and solic- 
ited. The speculators were active. The members of the Cin- 
cinnati were mobilized and marched. Two Congressmen, one 
lame, the other sick, were carried to the House to meet a possi- 
ble emergency. Another, planning to leave town, was ordered to 
his post.2 The friends of Assumption were becoming uneasy. 
Letters in opposition were pouring in from men like Doctors 
Rush and Logan of Philadelphia and were being peddled about 
by Maclay to members of the Pennsylvania delegation. Alas, 
that he should have found ‘a woman in the room’ with old man 
Scott again? 

These activities so wrought upon the nerves of Robert Morris 
that he sought a new avenue of approach to his erratic colleague. 
Would Maclay join Morris in some land speculations? The former 
was suspicious, but interested.‘ For several days Morris talked 

4 Maclay, 203, 8 Tbid., 209. 8 Ihid., 212, 4 Ibid., 214, 


62 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


land — the play continuing for eleven days. The debate was be- 
coming bitter. The able, bitter-tongued AXdanus Burke of South 
Carolina made a ferocious attack on Hamilton, and the lobbies, 
coffee-houses, streets, buzzed with talk of a duel. 

The distress among Hamilton’s friends increased. In the Senate, 
shut off from the curious eyes of the public, feelings could be mani- 
fested with some abandon. Ellsworth and Izard ‘walked all the 
morning back and forward.’ Strong of Massachusetts and Pat- 
erson of New Jersey ‘seemed moved but not so much agitated.’ 
King ‘looked like a boy who had been whipped.’ And the hair 
on Schuyler, a heavy speculator and father-in-law of Hamilton, 
‘stood on end as if the Indians had fired at him.’? 

But courage was revived, and there was unwonted activity. 
Most of Washington’s household joined the lobby — Humphreys, 
Jackson, and Nelson, his secretaries — and were particularly at- 
tentive to Vining. This was the result of a caucus of Hamilton’s 
supporters the night before when the decision was reached to risk 
a vote. 

Three days later, the chance was taken, and Hamilton lost by 
two votes. The scene was dramatic. Sedgwick made an ominous 
speech and, on being called to order, took his hat and left. ‘A 
funeral oration,’ sneered Maclay. When he returned he seemed to 
have been weeping. Even the eyes of the self-contained Fitz- 
simons ‘were brimming full’ as he went about ‘reddened like 
scarlet.” Clymer, ‘always pale,’ was ‘deadly white,’ his lips quiv- 
ering. But ‘happy impudence sat on Laurance’s brow.’ Wads- 
worth, who was financially interested, ‘hid his grief under the rim 
of a round hat,’ and Boudinot,? another speculator, left his distress 
naked to his enemies — ‘his wrinkles rose in ridges and the angles — 
of his mouth were depressed and assumed a curve resembling a 
horse shoe.’ 4 

The speculators poured out of the galleries and into the coffee- 
houses and taverns to relieve their feelings with oaths over a mug. 
The air was electric — and cause enough. Many speculators or 
their agents had been scouring the back country of the Carolinas 
and Georgia for months buying up State securities on the assump- 


1 Maclay, 227, 230. 2 Ibid., 234. 
* Elias Boudinot of New Jersey. 4 Maclay, 237, 


HAMILTON IN THE SADDLE 63 


tion that they would be funded. They had bet on a sure thing — 
and lost. 


Tx \ 

For a moment the friends of Assumption appeared to lose in- 
terest in the new Government. Some acted as though the experi- 
ment launched by the Constitution had failed and was not worth a 
ceremonious burial. The interest of Congress lagged, and in the 
Senate, where the Assumptionists were strongest, business was 
practically abandoned. In less than an hour after it was called to 
order, Rufus King would move an adjournment.! It was a gloomy 
and cold April — the distant hills and even the house-tops covered 
with snow.” “The Eastern members talk a strange language,’ 
wrote Madison to Monroe. ‘They avow, some of them at least, a 
determination to oppose all provisions for the public debt which 
does not include this, and intimate danger to the Union from a 
failure to assume.’* Senator Johnson of North Carolina found ‘the 
gentlemen who are in favor of assumption... very sore and im- 
patient under their defeat.’* Not a few of the Federalists began to 
speak and write pessimistically of the doubtful value of the Govern- 
ment. From his library at Beverly, George Cabot could see the 
danger of ‘division, anarchy and wretchedness,’® and if the States 
seized the opportunity to ‘provide honestly for their creditors... 
the general government would be ruined irrevocably.’ But the 
thing that pained Cabot most was the attitude of Madison. Had 
he changed his principles? ® 

In the Hamiltonian press the comments were funereal. Fenno’s 
paper teemed with indignant protests and savage attacks on the 
State ‘demagogues’ who were ‘hankering after popularity at 
home.’? ‘Americanus,’ paying tribute to Hamilton and his funding 
plan, found it ‘wantonly destroyed’ and ‘in broken pieces at the 
several shrines of ambition, avarice and vanity.’ § 

Yet all the scribes were not similarly depressed. A writer in the 
‘New York Journal,’ describing the birth and death of Assumption, 
worked the advocates of the measure into a frenzy. He pictured it 


1 Maclay, 248. 2 Iind., 250. 

8 Writings, 1, 517. 4 McRee, Iredell, 11, 286. 
5 Lodge, Cabot, 35-36. 6 Ibid. (to Goodhue), 37. 
1 Gazette of the United States, April 21, 1790. 8 Jbid., April 24, 1790. 


64 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


as ‘the bastard of Eastern speculators who have lost their puri- 
tanic manners’ — the ‘brat’ having been brought into the world 
“by the dexterous application of the forceps.’ Thus it was injured 
by the ‘violence of the delivery,’ but ‘Dr. Slop’ had hoped to save 
it by having it bathed ‘in Yankee rum.’ ‘The unfortunate child 
was presented to the baptismal font by Granny Fitzsimmons; and 
Mr. Sedgwick, who is gifted with canting talents, officiated as 
priest, baptized the infant, and his name stands on the parish 
books as Al—ex—der Assumption.’ But alas, ‘the child of pro- 
mise who would have redeemed the Eastern States from poverty 
and despair is now no more.’ ! 

But Hamilton was not despairing — he had just begun to fight. 


x 


It was under these conditions that an event of tremendous im- 
port occurred. On Sunday a stage-coach lumbered up to the tav- 
ern on Broadway, and a tall, travel-worn man emerged and en- 
tered the hostelry. Momentous as was the meaning of his arrival, 
it claimed but scant notice in the papers of the city. : 


“On Sunday last, arrived in this city, Thomas Jefferson, Esq., Secre- 
tary of State for the United States of America.’ 2 


There is nothing in the press or the correspondence of the time to 
indicate the slightest appreciation of the significance of this ac- 
cession to governmental circles. No doubt Madison was among the 
first to greet him, but of this we have no evidence. For two weeks 
Jefferson had been upon the road from Richmond, resting a day at 
Alexandria where an eighteen-inch snow caused him to send his 
carriage on by water and take the public stage. The roads were 
wretched and there was little opportunity for restful sleep. 
Occasionally the long-legged traveler left the stage to mount his 
horse for exercise. Thus he rode to the field of battle. 


XI 
As Hamilton surveyed the wreckage of the field, he saw an 
opportunity. There was another bitter battle pending over the 
selection of the site of the permanent capital. Might he not bar- 
4 Centinel, June 19, 1790. 8 Daily Advertiser, March 24, 1790. 


HAMILTON IN THE SADDLE 65 


gain a bit and trade enough votes for Assumption? The site of the 
capital was a matter of indifference to him. No sentimental ties 
bound him to any State or community. No dust sacred to him 
rested anywhere in American soil. He was ready to go with any 
group that could contribute enough votes to make Assumption 
sure. Philadelphia— New York — the Susquehanna — Balti- 
more — the Potomac — a mere bagatelle to him. In the fact that 
it was more than that to others he saw his chance. Could the Vir- 
ginians or the Marylanders who had opposed Assumption pay 
him in votes for a capital at Georgetown, or even Baltimore? 
Could Robert Morris whip the stubborn Pennsylvanians into line 
for a capital in Philadelphia or on the Susquehanna? True, Wash- 
ington favored Georgetown, but that meant nothing to Hamilton 
if Georgetown could not bring Assumption. It is a myth of history 
that he was tenderly considerate of the wishes of his chief: the 
facts to sustain it do not appear. Far more important to him was 
the fact that Madison and Carroll favored Georgetown. They had 
votes. 

The intense bitterness over the struggle called for infinite 
diplomacy and sagacity in negotiation. The papers of the country 
were filled with ill-natured letters on the fight which was no more 
in evidence in Congress than in the bar-rooms of the competing 
cities. Ames, like Hamilton, cared little about the site if he could 
but get Assumption, and was disgusted with the ‘despicable grog- 
shop contest, whether the taverns in New York or Philadelphia 
shall get the custom of Congress.’ Sedgwick had become a ‘per- 
_ fect slave to the business,’ and ‘Goodhue frowned all day long and 
swears as much as a good Christian can...’! 

By early June the bargaining stage had been reached. One day 
Tench Coxe, of the Treasury, and Jackson, one of Washington’s 
secretaries, called at the lodgings of Fitzsimons and Clymer with 
the bald proposition to trade the permanent residence to Philadel- 
phia for enough Pennsylvania votes to pass Assumption. Taking 
this as a hint from Hamilton, Robert Morris wrote him that early 
the next morning he should be taking a walk on the Battery, and 
if any propositions were open he would be very glad to have the 
Secretary of the Treasury join him in his constitutional. Thus, 

4 Ames (to Dwight), 1, 79-80, 


66 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


long before many of the statesmen had enjoyed their coffee, Ham- 
ilton and Morris paced up and down at the deserted Battery. 
With Walpolean directness, Hamilton went to the point. He 
needed one vote in the Senate and five in the House. If Morris 
could assure him these, he could give assurance, in return, that the 
permanent residence would be given to Germantown or the Falls 
of the Delaware. Morris promised to consult his colleagues — but 
how about the temporary residence for Philadelphia? After think- 
ing it over, Hamilton sent word that he would not think of bar- 
gaining on the temporary residence.! For several days these 
negotiations continued. The Pennsylvanians moved with a de- 
liberation that tried Hamilton’s patience. A few days later he 
threatened his Philadelphia friends with the possibility of the 
New-Englanders going to Baltimore or the Potomac.” 

Meanwhile, Hamilton had been thinking seriously of Jefferson. 
They met as strangers, knowing one another well by reputation. 
Their feelings were friendly. There were innumerable reasons why 
they should ultimately fly at each other’s throats, but that was in 
the future. One June day they met at the presidential mansion on 
Broadway, and, leaving at the same time, Hamilton saw his op- 
portunity. 

There was a picture for an artist to paint — Hamilton and 
Jefferson, arm in arm, walking along Broadway discussing the 
possibilities of a bargain. With all the persuasiveness of his elo- 
quence, Hamilton dwelt on the very real danger of disunion if 
Assumption failed. With subtle diplomacy he seemed to throw 
himself trustfully on Jefferson’s mercy. A great struggle for in- 
dependence — a promising young nation — and was all to be 
lost? The South wanted the capital, the North wanted Assump- 
tion — could there not be a common meeting-ground? Jefferson 
would see. 

A dinner at Jefferson’s table in the house on Broadway. Men 
from the South about the board. The topic — the pending bar- 
gain. A little later, Hamilton was informed that an agreement 
could be reached. The word was passed along the line. Even 
Madison satisfied himself that, since Assumption could not be 
prevented, the bargain might as well be made — but if there had 

1 Maclay, 292. 3 Tbid., 299. 


HAMILTON IN THE SADDLE 67 


been no bargain there would have been no Assumption. A few 
nights later the Pennsylvania delegation entertained both Hamil- 
ton and Jefferson at dinner. The latter impressed one guest with 
his ‘dignity of presence and gravity,’ Hamilton with his ‘boyish 
giddy manner.’ Whatever may have been the cause of the gravity 
of Jefferson, there was reason for the giddiness of Hamilton — he 
had won!? 


XII 


The attempt of Jefferson in later life to explain his part in the 
bargain over Assumption, with the assertion that he had been de- 
ceived by Hamilton, is in the nature of an alibi created after the 
crime. He was not a simple-minded rustic, and his correspondence 
previous to the bargain shows that he had given serious considera- 
tion to Assumption. He had been in daily contact with Madison 
who had led the fight against it. A meticulously careful student of 
the press, he unquestionably was familiar with every objection to 
Assumption and funding which he afterward offered. He had un- 
doubtedly read Madison’s argument which had been published a 
month after he reached New York. As late as June 20th, he was 
writing Monroe that, unless the quarrel over Assumption and the 
residence was settled, ‘there will be no funding bill agreed to, our 
credit will burst and vanish, and the States separate, to take care, 
every one of itself.’ Much as he would prefer that the States pay 
their own debts, he could see ‘the necessity of yielding to the cries 
of the creditors ... for the sake of the Union, and to save it from 
the greatest of all calamities, the total extinction of our credit in 
Europe.’? Here was justification enough for his action without 
resorting to the fanciful story of his deception by Hamilton. ‘The 
question of assuming the State debts has created greater animosi- 
ties than I ever yet saw,’ he wrote Dr. Gilmer a week after his 
letter to Monroe.* Thus he knew precisely how the lines were 
drawn. Perhaps he did not appreciate at the moment the political 
advantage of appearing on the side of the opposition, — but he was 
not deceived. Nor was Madison imposed upon. He accepted the 
bargain because ‘the crisis demands the spirit of accommodation,’ 


1 Maclay, 310. | 
2 Works, Ford, vi, 42-45. 8 Thid., vi, 52. 


68 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


albeit he wished it ‘considered as an unavoidable evil and possibly 
not the worse side of the dilemma.’? 

With many, however, the triumph of Assumption meant placing 
Hamilton and his followers in an impregnable position; this, too, 
was the idea of the Hamiltonians and great was their rejoicing. 
When the measure passed the Senate, members of the lower House 
were packed behind the iron railing, the smiling faces of Ames and 
Sedgwick conspicuous among them. To the extremists in the 
opposition it seemed the end. ‘I do not see that I can do any good 
here and J think I had better go home,’ wrote Maclay. ‘Every- 
thing, even to the naming of a committee is prearranged by Ham- 
ilton and his group of speculators.’? And the Hamiltonians, who 
had raged over the satirical article on the birth of Assumption, 
made merry over a verse in Fenno’s journal: 


‘The wit who bastardized thy name 
And croaked a funeral dirge 

Knew not how spotless was thy fame. 
How soon thou would’st emerge.’ § 


When Congress adjourned, Hamilton, rejoicing in his triumphs, 
turned gayly to the next.stepin his programme, with more power- 
ful influences behind him than he had ever had before. 


1 Writings (to Monroe), 1, 522. 2 Maclay, 332. 
8 Gazette of the United States, August 25, 1790. 


CHAPTER IV 
PREMONITIONS OF BATTLE 


I 


AMILTON was at the high tide of his popularity and power 

when Congress next convened in Philadelphia. His funding 
system had established the Nation’s credit, and the genius and 
daring of the brilliant young man of thirty-three were on every 
tongue. The ‘ Maryland Journal’ claimed ‘respectable authority’ 
for the assertion that in Quebec he was ‘supposed equal to the 
celebrated Mr. Pitt, and superior to the Prime Minister of any 
other court in Europe.’! Among the merchants and people of 
wealth and property he was acclaimed the savior of the State. 
Everywhere he was the idol of the aristocracy. 


And, in the saddle, he was riding hard. Alth ough his was the | 
second position in the-Cabinet,-he. thought of himself.as the Te 
Minister. Washington was a constitutional monarch. Th 
members of the President’s official family were his mn et 
His policies were the po olicies of the Government, and to question 
them was hostility to the e State. In the Cabinet meetings his man- 
ner was masterful to a degree. Considering himself Prime Minister, 
he felt no delicacy about interfering in the departments of his 
colleagues. Even Knox, who adored him, resented his deter- 
mination to make all the purchases for the Department of War. 
When the War Secretary resisted, Hamilton had a compliant Con- 
gress pass a law giving him that privilege — an absurdity that con- 
tinued as long as he was in the Cabinet.? The soft-spoken, mild, 
and courteous Jefferson, who preferred the ways of conciliation and 
persuasion, observed the dictatorial airs of his masterful young 
associate with a surprise that hardened to distaste. 

But_the feeling awakened among the masses by the failure to 
discriminate in the matter of the securities, and by Assumption, 
was increasing in intensity. The common soldier had not profited 
by these policies. The farmer and the mechanic could see no bene- 

1 February 25, 1791. 2 Brooks, Knoz, 213. 





70 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


fit to themselves, but among speculators, some of them members 
of Congress, they observed evidence of new-found wealth. These 
were building finer houses, riding in coaches where they had pre- 
viously walked, and there was an ominous rumbling and grumb- 
ling beneath the surface, to which the Hamiltonians were oblivious 
or indifferent. After all, this was merely the whining of the ne’ er- 
do-wells of the taverns and the illiterates of the farms. 

~The work was only begun, and there could be no turning back 
now. The assumption of the State debts called for the tapping of 
new sources of revenue. This would increase the burdens of the 
people, but what would they have? They could not eat their cake 
and have it too — could not have a strong government without 
paying the price. Utterly unmindful of the complaining of the 
people of no importance, Hamilton turned resolutely to his task 
~and prepared his excise tax for the consideration of Congress. 


II 
In raising money to meet the obligations of Assumption, it was 


the purpose of Hamilton to_resort to direct taxation as little as 
possible, and to make iiuvies Baar che bunioa Tasca 
attention to the domestic manufacture of spirits — a luxury to 
sqme, but a very r real necessity to others, This was particularly 
true in the States where distilleries were plentiful. That it would 
call forth a protest from some quarters, he had no doubt, and he 
rejoiced in the certainty of combat. Strong man that he was, he 
went forth in shining armor to establish the right of the Govern- 
ment to an internal revenue. He knew that excise taxes were ob- 
noxious, albeit necessary, and he sought the chance to vindicate 
the right of the Government to do the necessary, unpopular 
thing. 

Instantly the challenge was accepted in Pennsylvania where 
whiskey stills abounded in the Alleghanies. Some of the State’s 
representatives in Congress were instantly on their toes, denounc- 
ing the plan as arbitrary and despotic. In the Legislature, Albert 
Gallatin, a remarkable young man, soon to prove himself the only 
member of the opposition capable of coping with Hamilton in the 








field of finance, framed a reply, denouncing the plan as ‘subver- . 


sive of the rights, liberty and peace of the people.’ In the midst of 


PREMONITIONS OF BATTLE 71 


excitement — for the Legislature sat in Philadelphia — the reply 
was debated and adopted by an overwhelming majority. 

But the opposition was comparatively weak. Jefferson and Ma- 
dison were hostile to the principle, but there had been a bargain 
on Assumption to which they were parties. They could not de- 
ceive themselves as to the necessity. If Jefferson raised a finger to 
prevent the passage of the bill, he covered his tracks. Even Giles, 
soon to become the most vehement leader of the Jeffersonian 
party, at first looked upon it with some favor. Madison could see 
no escape. 

Among the masses throughout the country, however, the ob- 
scure orators were busy in the bar-rooms, on the streets, and at 
the crossroads. The character of the discussion among the people 
is indicated in imaginary conversations by a writer in a Baltimore 
paper. A friend of the excise fares forth into the streets and meets 
its enemies. ‘An outrage!’ cried one. ‘Had we not gone to war 
with England on a tax?’ ‘Ah,’ but, says the defender, ‘then we 
were taxed by another country and without representation, while 
here we tax ourselves through our chosen representatives.’ ‘Yes,’ 
but, says Rumor, ‘under the excise act men can break into the 
people’s houses.’ ‘Wrong,’ says the defender; ‘the law provides no 
such arbitrary power.’ ‘But,’ persists the enemy, ‘we shall be 
eaten up by excise officers.’ ‘Silly,’ says the defender; ‘numer- 
ically these officials will be unimportant.’ Then the defender en- 
counters one candid enemy of the measure. ‘I hate the excise,’ he 
cries, ‘because it strengthens the Government by providing effec- 
tually for its necessities; and the Government which lays it because 
it isa Government of vigor.’ Whereupon the defender praises him 
as an honest man. 

The moment the Excise Bill was presented in the House, the 
ever alert Jackson was ready with a motion to strike out the essen- 
tial part of the first clause. ‘The mode of taxation was odious, un- 
equal, unpopular, and oppressive, more particularly in the South- 
ern States,’ where under the hot Southern skies spirituous liquors 
were more than salutary — they were necessary. Why deprive 
the masses of ‘the only luxury they enjoy’? Why impose upon the 
American people an excise that had been odious in England from 

1 Maryland Journal, February 11, 1791. 


72 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 
the days of Cromwell, and which had been reprobated by Black- 


stone? 

Yes, added an indignant Virginian,! ‘it will convulse the Govern- 
ment; it will let loose a swarm of harpies, who, under the domina- 
tion of revenue officers, will range through the country, prying 
into every man’s house and affairs, and like a Macedonian phalanx 
bear down all before them.’ The mercantile interests were paying 
their duties with promptitude? He was tired of these encomiums. 
“The increase in the revenue has served to enhance the value of 
the public securities, of which it is well known they hold a very 
considerable portion.’ ? 

On the second day, Madison went on record as opposed to the 
principle and in favor of the measure. The only question to be 
considered was the necessity for the revenue — and that was in- 
disputable. He personally would prefer direct taxes, but the major- 
ity of the people were against them. Of all forms of the excise, 
that on ardent spirits impressed him as the least objectionable. 

But, demanded Jackson, disappointed at Madison’s failure to 
join in the assault, why not other taxes — taxes on salaries, pen- 
sions, lawyers? Because, answered Laurance, the Assumption 
calls for revenue, and this is the best way to raise it. True, added 
another,’ and he had ‘not found a single person against it’ — 
and this in Philadelphia where the Legislature was sitting! What! 
exclaimed Timothy Bloodworth of North Carolina, why ‘people 
to the southward universally condemn the tax.’ Yes, indeed, 
contributed another, especially in North Carolina, ‘where the 
consumption of ardent spirits is ten times greater than in Connec- 
ticut.’ 

Up rose Sedgwick in conciliatory mood. He was not impressed 
with ‘the considerations of morality,’ and could not think that the 
tax “would be attended with any sensible inconvenience.’ There 
certainly was no thought of using military force in its collection. 
And then it was that Giles, who, next to Madison, was the most 
fervent and able of the Jeffersonians, astonished many by giving 
his hearty approval to the tax as necessary ‘to the honor, peace 
and security’ of the country.‘ 


1 Josiah Parker. 8 Annals, January 5, 1791. 
_§ Samuel Livermore. ¢ Annals, January 6, 1791 ) 


PREMONITIONS OF BATTLE 73 


Thus for days the debate continued with its reiterations, until a 
new note was struck with a proposed amendment, aimed at Hamil- 
ton whose audacious methods and successive successes were caus- 
ing grave concern in some quarters, to prohibit revenue agents 
from interfering in elections. These officers in their work, said 
Samuel Livermore, ‘will acquire such a knowledge of persons and 
characters as will give them great advantage and enable them to 
influence elections to a great degree.’ ‘Impolitic in respect to law, 
repugnant to the Constitution, and degrading to human nature,’ 
protested Ames. It would prevent self-respecting men from tak- 
ing the places, added Sedgwick. When the vote was taken, the 
amendment was defeated with both Madison and Giles voting 
against it. 

It was not until the House took up the duration of the tax that 
the great battle began, and under the leadership of Giles, who had 
hitherto given it his support.1 But Madison was not impressed. 
and in the vote on placing a limitation on the operation of the bill 
he was found with the Hamiltonians — and there he stood on the 
final vote. 

Even in the Senate the attempt to defeat the measure was con- 
tinued, and while Hamilton was strongest in that body, the ener- 
getic young Secretary took nothing for granted. It was not enough 
that the committee considering the bill had been packed with his 
supporters; he took personal charge. For several days he walked 
briskly into the room and took his place at the table, after which 
the doors were closed and locked. The worried Maclay, who was 
preparing the case against the measure on behalf of the distillers, 
sensed a conspiracy. When Adams hastened an adjournment of 
the Senate while the committee was sitting, the victim of the gout 
put him down as ‘deep in the cabals of the Secretary.’? Preparing 
a list of distillers who would be affected, on which to base an argu- 
ment, Maclay knocked at the committee room. The door opened 
and the eager eye of the Senator caught a glimpse of Hamilton at 
the table before Robert Morris closed it, as he stepped outside. 
With his suspicions confirmed, the gruff old Democrat left his 
papers with his colleague and turned away. ‘I suppose no further 
use was made of it,’ he commented.? When the bill passed four 

1 Annals, January 11, 1791. 2 Maclay, 385. 8 Ihid., 385. 


TA JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


days later, he thought ‘war and bloodshed... the most likely 
consequence’; and concluded that ‘Congress may go home’ since 
‘Mr. Hamilton is all-powerful and fails in nothing he attempts.’? 

The same conclusion had been reached by Jefferson before. 
Just after the passage of the bill, he was writing a friend of his 
fears of the effect of the policies of the Treasury upon the people. 
Even though they were right, ‘more attention should be paid to 
the general opinion.’ The excise had passed — the Bank Bill 
would pass. Perhaps the only corrective for ‘what is corrupt in 
our present form of government’ would be an increase in the mem- 
bership of the House ‘so as to grant a more agricultural repre- 
sentation which may put that interest above that of the stock 
jobbers.’ ? 

Jefferson had reached the end of his patience, and was preparing 
to challenge the pretensions, policies, and power of his ardent and 
dictatorial young colleague. 


III 


It was inevitable that a national bank should be a feature of 
Hamilton’s financial system. Long before a national government 
loomed large as a probability, he had conceived the plan, and with 
the temerity of youthful audacity had solemnly outlined it in 
letters to Robert Morris.2 With the opportunity before him, he 
moved with confident strides to his purpose, and the day after his 
recommendation of an excise reached Congress, his ‘Report on the 
Bank’ was read. His rare familiarity with the principles of finance, 
the history of banking, and the banking experiences of nations 
made his ‘Report’ a persuasive document.’ Its adoption was as 
inevitable as its submission. He was on the very peak of his 
power. Commerce and wealth in all the cities were saluting him, 
for his policies were in their interest, and the professional and in- 
tellectual class had been won by the dazzling success of his daring 
undertakings. In House and Senate he numbered among the 
registers of his will the greater part of the strong and the brilliant. 
Somehow, too, the impression was prevalent that he was the favor- 
ite instrument through which Washington wrought his plans. If 


1 Maclay, 387. i 2 Jefferson’s Works, viu, 123. 
3 Works, u1, 319-41; 342-87, 4 Thid., 388-443, 


PREMONITIONS OF BATTLE 75 


the small farmers and the mechanics seemed acquiescent, it only 
meant that they were inarticulate — but inarticulate they were as 
this dashing figure moved on from triumph to triumph with a 
shouting multitude of merchants, lawyers, politicians, and specu- 
lators in his wake. 

Thus, when the Bank Bill reached the Senate, Maclay expressed 
the general feeling in the comment that ‘it is totally in vain to 
oppose this bill.’! Ten days later, he was all the more convinced at 
a dinner where he met Morris and sat between two ‘merchants 
of considerable note,’ and observed, on mentioning the Bank, 
that they were ‘magnetically drawn to the contemplation of the 
moneyed interest.’ ? 

If the bill passed the Senate without a conflict, it was not to get 
through the House without a skirmish which was to mark, as some 
historians think, the definite commencement of party warfare. 

The House debate was brief but sharp, though pitched upon a 
higher plane than some preceding discussions. There was some 
questioning of the necessity of a bank; some criticism of the mo- 
nopolistic features of the bank proposed; but Madison, who spoke 
at the beginning, furnished the dominant theme in his challenge 
to the constitutionality of such an institution. There was cer- 
tainly no specific authcrization of congressional power in the Con- 
stitution. This was conceded by Hamilton, who boldly evoked the 
doctrine of implied powers. It required no abnormal perspicacity 
to foresee the unlimited possibilities of these. Here was something 
read into the Constitution that would, rightly or wrongly, have 
made its ratification impossible had it provided a specific grant of 
such power. Hamilton and many of his lieutenants had been 
frankly dissatisfied with the powers that had been conceded by the 
people; and here was an opening for the acquisition of power that 
the people would have refused. This to-day — what to-morrow? 

When Madison rose to oppose the Bank, we may be sure that it 
was after many intimate conversations with Jefferson. He spoke 
in low tones and with his customary dignity and precision and 
without abuse, and his argument was not susceptible to an easy 
assault. After all, ‘the Father of the Constitution’ knew some- 
thing about his child. 

i Maclay, 364, 2 Ibid., 369. 


‘ vd rt, pat OF $ 
pecTrme CF rePlre Poe 


76 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


“ “TVhe doctrine of implication is always a tender one,’ he said. 
‘The danger of it has been felt by other governments. The deli- 
cacy was felt in the adoption of our own; the danger may also be 
felt if we do not keep close to our chartered authorities. ... If 
implications thus remote and thus multiplied may be linked to- 
gether, a chain may be formed that will reach every object of 
legislation, every object within the whole compass of political 
economy.’ More than that — ‘It takes from our constituents the 
opportunity of deliberating on the untried measure, although 
their hands are also to be tied by the same terms.’ More still — ‘it 
involves a monopoly which affects the equal rights of every citi- 
zen,’ 3 

On the next day Fisher Ames made his defense of the doctrine 
of implied powers. The argument of Madison had impressed him 
as ‘a great speech,’ but steeped in ‘casuistry and sophistry.’ He 
thought Madison had wasted his time, however, in reading the 
debates on constitutional powers in the various State ratifying 
conventions — not at all to the purpose. ‘No man would pretend 
to give Congress the power,’ he wrote, ‘against a fair construction 
of the Constitution.’ 2 

But the clever Ames had no intention of making such a frank 
admission on the floor. He was a practical man and he defended 
the Hamiltonian doctrine with eloquence and vigor. With these 
two speeches, the debate might as well have closed, but it con- 
tinued long enough to permit the Hamiltonian Old Guard to say 
their pieces. Giles argued and Jackson raved in opposition, and 
the measure passed with a margin of nineteen votes. 

It is significant that nineteen of the twenty votes in opposition 
were those of Southern members, the only Northerner in the list 
being Jonathan Grout of Massachusetts, a Democrat, who did not 
return to the next Congress. Like preceding Hamiltonian measures, 
this meant the concentration of the financial resources of the coun- 
try in the commercial North to the disadvantage of the agricul- 
tural South. But this was not the only reason. With the South- 
erners, among whom banks were a rarity, and the Westerners, to 
whom they were as meaningless as the canals on Mars, the advan- 


1 Annals, February 2, 1791. 2 Ames (to Dwight), 1, 94. 
* Annals, February 3, 1791. 


PREMONITIONS OF BATTLE 77 


tage of such an institution was not felt. In both sections anything. 
that hinted of monopoly was abhorrent. Thus, 1 in addition to the 
constitutional difference, there was an economic ¢ conflict that was 
sectional in its s nature. | 


PRA 





IV 


But the battle was not yet won. The conflict was transferred to 
the Cabinet, for Washington was not at all convinced that there 
was no constitutional prohibition. Not only did he withhold his 
signature till the last minute, but there are reasons to believe that 
he had a veto in mind almost to the end. For Madison, with whose 
part in the framing of the Constitution he was familiar, he had 
a profound respect. Having discussed the bill with Jefferson 
informally, Washington requested written opinions from both 
Jefferson and Randolph, the Attorney-General. Both were in 
complete accord with the conclusions of Madison. The opinion of 
Jefferson, expressed with all his force of reasoning, was a powerful 
challenge to the doctrine of implied powers.} 

It was at about this time that Washington summoned Madison 
to the Morris house, which served as the Executive Mansion in 
Philadelphia, to invite a fuller expression of his views. The great 
man listened in silence, and Madison thought with sympathy, 
_ while the little giant of the Constitutional Convention, out of the 
wealth of his learning and experience, poured forth his reasons for 
opposition. Not once, but several times, the little figure of Madi- 
son must have been seen entering the Morris house in those days 


of suppressed excitement, for there were numerous conferences. 


As the ten-day period followed for the affixing of the presidential 
signature was drawing to an end, and Washington requested his 
friend to reduce his objections to writing, Madison assumed that it 
was a veto message he was asked to frame. Nor was it a far- 
fetched assumption, for on more than one occasion the President 
had made use of Madison’s pen.? 

Meanwhile the Hamiltonians, at first puzzled, became alarmed. 
From the temper of their talk in Philadelphia, Madison was con- 
vinced that in the event of a veto they were ready for open opposi- 
tion to Washington, backed by the wealth and influence of the 

1 Jefferson’s Works, m1, 145-53. _ 1 Madison’s Writings, 1, 171. 


78 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON ~ 


powerful.! Ugly, silly stories, reflecting upon the great personage 
on whom the Hamiltonians found it profitable to claim amonopoly, 
were set afloat. Fisher Ames gave currency in Boston to the the- 
ory that Washington was influenced by the fear that the establish- 
ment of a financial capital in Philadelphia would prevent the re- 
moval of the political capital to the banks of the stream that 
washed the boundary of Mount Vernon.? If some discretion was 
used in Philadelphia, where the grumbling was confined to the 
fashionable drawing-rooms, no such circumspection was observed 
in New York, where the meanest motives were ascribed to the 
President, and among the speculators and Tory sympathizers 
open threats were made. Madison heard, while there a little later, 
that ‘the licentiousness of [these] tongues exceeded anything that 
was conceived.’* ‘This struggle marked a definitive break in the 
relations of Hamilton and Jefferson. The dictatorial disposition of 
the former Osition, and he was _temperamen- 
tay incapable of as differentiation between political opposition 
and personal hostility. The fact that Jefferson, in response to a 
command from Washington, had written an opinion against the 
Bank could bear only one interpretation — ‘asperity and ill humor 
toward me.’* The fact that Washington accepted Hamilton’s 
view, did not, however, shake Jefferson’s faith in the President, 
and in defeat nothing so ill-tempered escaped him as flowed in a 
stream from the Federalists when threatened with defeat. Within 
a month after Hamilton had won his fight, Jefferson, in comment- 
ing to a friend on what he conceived to be a dangerous trend, wrote 
that ‘it is fortunate that our first executive magistrate is purely 
and zealously republican’ — the highest praise he could bestow.5 
The press was not verbose in its comments on the bill, albeit 
Freneau fought it in the ‘Federal Gazette.’*® The ‘Pennsylvania 
Gazette’ was ungraceful in defeat. Denouncing the Bank as ‘a 
proposition made to the moneyed interest,’ it commented on its 
“preparations to subscribe,’ and found ‘the terms... so advan- 
tageous that no equal object of speculation is perhaps presented in 
any quarter of the globe.’’ Fenno offered his best in a verse: 


1 Madison’s Writings, 11, 171. 2 Ames (to Minot), February 17, 1791. 
8 Madison’s Writings (to Jefferson), 1, 534-35. 

¢ Hamilton’s Works (letter to Carrington), rx, 513-35. 

5 Parton, 01, 1. 6 Dustin’s Freneau, 160. ¥ May 11, 1791. 


PREMONITIONS OF BATTLE 79 


“The States as one agree that this is right 
Let pigmy politicians rave and write.’ ! 

Thus the First Congress closed its labors with no little rhapso- 
dizing in the press over the results. A New York paper offered an 
epitaph of glorification,? which a Boston paper condensed into the 
simple comment that it had ‘established public confidence and 
credit, reconciled the jarring interests of discontented States, and 
cemented the people in the bonds of harmony, peace and love.’ 

One man, at least, had cause for jubilation. In two years Hamil- 
ton had risen to a position of commanding power, proved his 
genius in constructive statesmanship, accomplished everything he 
had set out to do, made himself the idol of the wealthy and the 
powerful, the recognized leader of the influential commercial 
class, the acknowledged head of a brilliant and militant party. 
His friends were comparing him to Pitt, then in the heyday of his 
power — and he was only on the threshold. So great was the en- 
thusiasm in commercial circles that he made a special trip to New 
York to accept the homage of the Chamber of Commerce at a 
reception, to linger a week among his worshipers, and to return to 
Philadelphia reinvigorated by the wine of idolatry pressed to his 
lips.4 At that moment he was on the top of the world. 


Vv 


Meanwhile, Jefferson and Madison drove out of Philadelphia 
together on one of those journeys of recreation during which pol- 
iticians so often plan the strategy of war. Historians have found 
more in this journey than is to be discovered in the record. The 
trip through New England probably had no other object than that 
of pleasure and enlightenment. The relations of these two men 
were beautiful and went far beyond a mere congeniality in political 
opinions. There was a marked similarity in their characters. Both 
scholarly in their tastes, the books that interested one were certain 
to appeal to the other. Here were two men whose spirits were in 
accord. It is easy to think of them as sitting the candle out in con- 
verse about the winter fire, or as sitting far into the night in silence, 


1 Gazette of the United States, April 6, 1791. 
2 Daily Advertiser, February 25, 1791. 
8 Independent Chronicle, March 10, 1791. ‘ New York Daily Advertiser, July 19, 1791. 


80 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


each finding pleasure in the mere presence of the other. Such a 
relationship had grown up through the years. They thought alike, 
found similar enjoyment in agricultural pursuits, and in the many 
little things of common life. 

“What say you,’ wrote Jefferson just before the beginning of 
the much-discussed journey, ‘to taking a wade into the country 
at noon? It will be pleasant above head at least, and the party 
will finish by dining here. Information that Colonel Beckwith? is 
coming to be an intimate with you, and I presume not a desirable 
one, encourages me to make a proposition which I did not ven- 
ture as long as you had your agreeable congressional society about 
you; that is to come and takea bed and plate with me... .To me 
it will be a relief from the solitude of which I have too much; and 
it will lessen your repugnance to be assured that it will not in- 
crease my expenses an atom. ... The approaching season will ren- 
der this situation more agreeable than Fifth Street, and even in the 
winter you will not find it disagreeable.’? It required no assidu- 
ous and cunning cultivation by Jefferson to wean Madison away 
from Hamilton. The relations of the first two far antedated those 
of the last. Madison had agreed with Hamilton on the necessity © 
for a more permanent and substantial union. They had fought to- 
gether for the ratification of the Constitution, but such were their 
temperamental differences that the breach which quickly appeared 
was inevitable when it came to the determination of the policies of 
that union. While Jefferson was still in Paris, Madison, without 
consulting his friend, was foreshadowing the policy of the future 
Jeffersonian party in his fight for discrimination against England 
in the revenue measure of the first congressional session. He pro- 
posed discrimination between the original creditors and the specu- 
lators before he had the opportunity to discuss the subject with 
Jefferson. If there was an accord with the latter, it was due less to 
the influence of one upon the other than to the similarity of their 
thinking. The little man with the mild, almost shy expression, who 
rode out of Philadelphia with Jefferson that spring of 1791, was 
much too big to have been led around by the nose by any of his 
contemporaries. 

As early as the spring of 1791, the names of the two were asso< 

1 British Agent. .* Domestic Life, 197-98. Jefferson was living in the country. 


PREMONITIONS OF BATTLE 81 


ciated in the minds of many as the prospective leaders of a party 
that would challenge the purposes of the Federalists. Answering a 
series of articles in the ‘Maryland Journal,’ some one advised the 
author of how to make his opinions worth while. ‘Keep always be- 
fore your eyes the steps by which Jefferson and Madison have 
gradually ascended to their present preéminence of fame. Like 
them you must devote your whole leisure to the most useful read- 
ing. Like them you must dive into the depths of philosophy and 
government.’ Thus they were already associated in the public 
mind, and there was some whispering among the Federalist leaders 
when they set forth in their carriage. 

Bumping and splashing over the rough tree-lined roads those 
spring days, they unquestionably discussed the political situation, 
but these discussions were only the continuation of others that had 
been proceeding throughout the previous fall and winter. If 
politics was the object of the journey, they were both remarkably 
successful in covering their tracks. There is nothing in the letter 
Jefferson wrote his daughter Mary to indicate anything more than 
a pleasure jaunt.” Ina letter to his other daughter, Martha, we 
hear much of fishing for speckled trout, salmon, and bass, of the 
strawberries in bloom, of vegetation and agricultural conditions — 
but nothing of politics.? To his son-in-law he wrote descriptions of 
historic places, of botanical objects and scenery, and of running 
foul of the blue law in Vermont prohibiting traveling on Sunday. 
The one reference to the journey in the correspondence of Madi- 
son merely says that ‘it was a very agreeable one, and carried us 
through an interesting country, new to us both.’> In none of 
these letters do we find a single reference to politics or politicians. 

Something is made of the call of the travelers on Burr and 
Livingston when in New York, and on Governor Clinton at Al- 
bany; but their conduct would have been suspicious only if they 
had failed to observe the ordinary amenities of social life in calling 
upon the leading public characters in the towns through which they 
passed. Still we may safely surmise that they found time while 
waiting for the fish to bite to exchange views on the necessity of 
organizing an opposition to the Federalists. It is even possible 


4 Maryland Journal, March 22, 1791. 2 Domestic Life, 199. 8 Tiid., 201. 
fi Jefferson’s Works, viu, 205. 5S Gay’s Madison, 


82 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


that out of these conversations on country roads actually sprang 
the Democratic Party, but there is no evidence. 


VI 


On his return to Philadelphia, Jefferson found himself the center 
of aremarkable newspaper controversy. Fascinated by the beauty 
of Marie Antoinette, Edmund Burke of England had written his 
bitter attack, not only on. the excesses of the French Revolution, 
but upon its democratic principles as well. It was the fashion in 
those days to conceal a hate of democracy under the cloak of a 
simulated horror over the crimes of the Terrorists. Thomas Paine 
had replied to Burke with his brilliant and eloquent defense of 
democracy, ‘The Rights of Man.’ In American circles where 
democracy was anathema, and even republicanism was discussed 
with cynicism, the Burke pamphlet was received with enthusiasm. 
It was not until some time later that ‘The Rights of Man’ reached 
New York, albeit its nature was known and there had been a keen 
curiosity to see it. Early in May, Madison had promised Jefferson 
to secure a copy as soon as possible. He understood that the pam- 
phlet had been suppressed in England, and that Paine had found it 
convenient to retire to Paris. ‘This,’ he wrote, ‘may account for 
his not sending copies to friends in this country.’! At length a 
single copy arrived and was loaned by its owner to Madison, who 
passed it on to Jefferson. He read it with enthusiasm. Here was a 
spirited defense of democracy, and of the fight the French were 
waging for their liberties; here an excoriation of the prattle in high 
social and governmental circles of the advantage, if not necessity, 
for titles of nobility. Here was not only an answer to Burke, but to 
John Adams, whose ‘Discourses of Davilla’ had been running for 
weeks in Fenno’s paper, and had been copied extensively in other 
journals with a similar slant. Jefferson was immensely pleased. 

Before he had finished with it, the owner had called upon Madi- 
son for its return, as arrangements had been made for its publica- 
tion by a Philadelphia printer. It was agreed that Jefferson should 
send it directly to the print shop, and in the transmission he wrote 
a brief explanation of the delay, and added: ‘I am extremely 
pleased to find it will be reprinted here, and that something is at 

1 Madison’s Writings, 1, 534. 


PREMONITIONS OF BATTLE 83 


length to be publicly said against the political heresies which have 
sprung up among us. I have no doubt our citizens will rally a 
second time round the standard of “Common Sense.”’’ 

To this note he attached so little importance that he kept no 
copy. With astonishment he found that the printer had used his 
note as the preface, with his name and official title as Secretary of 
State. The general conviction that the word ‘heresies’ was meant 
to apply to the Adams papers sufficiently indicates the popular 
interpretation of their trend. The storm broke. 

Major Beckwith, the British Agent, hastened to express his 
pained surprise to Washington’s Secretary at the recommendation 
by the Secretary of State of a pamphlet which had been suppressed 
in England. The secretary was sufficiently impressed by the scan- 
dalized tone of the aristocratic society of Philadelphia, which was 
usually lionizing some degenerate members of the European nobil- 
ity, to write his chief in detail. When Randolph dined with Mrs. 
Washington, Lear retailed it to him, and the suggestion was made 
that Jefferson should know. Thus there was something more than 
a tempest in a teapot. Everywhere men were partisans of the 
pamphlets of Burke or Paine, the aristocrats on one side, the demo- 
crats on the other, the stoutest of the republicans everywhere de- 
lighted with ‘The Rights of Man.’ This was true in even the small 
towns and the villages of far places. One traveler passing through 
Reading was surprised to find the two pamphlets the “general topic 
of conversation,’ and he was assured of the delight that awaited 
him in the reading of Paine’s.! All too long had the Americans 
been drugged with Fenno’s deification of the upper classes — with 
John Adams’s ‘Discourses’ on the necessity of ‘distinctions’ — 
and here was old ‘Common Sense’ back again in the old form slash- 
ing the aristocrats fore and aft. The press responded to the popu- 
lar demand, and everywhere ‘The Rights of Man’ was being pub- 
lished serially to be eagerly read by the thousands who had not 
seen the pamphlet. But it was not all one-sided. If the ‘Painites’ 
wrote furiously in some papers, the ‘Burkites’ were prolific in 
Fenno’s and a few others. In the fashionable drawing-rocms a poll 
would have shown a decided preference for the defender of aristo- 
cracy who had wept so eloquently over the woes of a frivolous 

1 Graydon, 375, “ ‘ 4 


84 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Queen. Nowhere was Burke so popular and Paine so loathed as in 
the home of Adams, the Vice-President. ‘What do you think of 
Paine’s pamphlet?’ asked Dr. Rush, to whom society was cooling 
because of his democratic tendencies. The second official of the 
Republic hesitated as if for dramatic effect, and then, solemnly lay- 
ing his hand upon his heart, he answered, “I detest that book and 
its tendency from the bottom of my heart.’ Indeed, most of the 
Federalists were frankly with Burke. ‘Although Mr. Burke may 
have carried his veneration for old establishments too far, and 
may not have made sufficient allowance for the imperfections of 
human nature in the conflict of the French Revolution,’ wrote 
Davie to Judge Iredell, ‘yet I think his letter contains a sufficient 
amount of intelligence to have rescued him from the undistin- 
guishing abuse of Paine.’ ! 

With most of the Federalist leaders in sympathy with Burke, 
few ventured to attack Paine in the open. Not so with Adams who 
was spluttering mad over the Jefferson ‘preface.’ He was positive 
that the publication of Paine’s pamphlet in this country had been 
instigated by his former colleague at Paris.? To him the pamphlet 
of Paine, the ‘preface’ of Jefferson, the acclaim for both on the part 
of the people was but a devilish conspiracy of Jefferson’s to pull 
him down. ‘More of Jefferson’s subterranean tricks.’ And with 
this conviction, John Quincy Adams, the son, then in Boston, took 
up a trenchant pen to write the articles of ‘Publicola’ for the 
‘Centinel,’ sneering at the Jeffersonian note to the printer, assail- 
ing Paine and democracy, and stoutly defending the governmental 
forms of England. So well did he discharge his filial duty that his 
articles were published in pamphlet form in England by the friends 
of Burke, and many of the Federalist papers reproduced them as 
they appeared. 

Then the newspaper battle began in earnest. Many indignant 
democrats rushed to the attack of ‘Publicola’ with all the greater 
zest because of the belief that ‘Publicola’ was none other than 
‘Davilla’ himself. ‘America will not attend to this antiquated 
sophistry,’ wrote one, ‘whether decorated by the gaudy ornaments 
of a Burke, the curious patch-work of a Parr to which all antiquity 
must have contributed its prettiest rags and tatters, or the homely 

1 McRee, Iredell, u, 335. 2 Adams, Adams, 1, 454, 


PREMONITIONS OF BATTLE 85 


ungraceful garb which has been furnished her by Mr. John Adams.’! — 
Another suggested that ‘Publicola’ would soon cease to write 
since ‘the time for the new election is approaching,’ although the 
‘Discourses’ might be continued without danger since ‘dullness, 
like the essence of opium, sets every reader to sleep before he has 
passed the third sentence.’? As for ‘Publicola,’ his letters were 
‘being brought forward to persuade the people that an hereditary 
nobility, and, of consequence, high salaries, pomp and parade are 
essential to the prosperity of the country.’? In Boston, where the 
letters were appearing, ‘Agricola’ and ‘Brutus’ began spirited 
replies in the rival paper.* Other writers, with less grace and force, 
_ joined in the fray. Who are to constitute our nobility, demanded 
‘Republican,’ our moneyed men — the speculators? If so ‘Dukes, 
Lords and Earls will swarm like insects gendered by the sun,’ and 
the worn-out soldier who had been tricked out of his paper would 
have the satisfaction of ‘bowing most submissively to their lord- 
‘ ships while seated in their carriages.’ 5 

But Adams was not without his defenders. ‘An American’ de- 
clared that all the abuse was ‘designed as a political ladder by 
which to climb.’ Miserable creatures! ‘Ages after the tide of time 
has swept their names into oblivion, the immortal deeds of Adams 
will shine on the brightest pages of history.’® ‘The Ploughman’ 
indignantly resented the insinuation that Adams had written the 
‘Publicola’ letters. In truth, ‘his friends consider Dr. Adams as 
being calumniated’ by having such sentiments ascribed to him.’ 
To all the ‘hornets’ that were buzzing about Adams, Fenno felt he 
could be indifferent, for they had no stings. They were merely 
nonentities trying to give consequence to their scribblings by ap- 
pearing to be answering the Vice-President. 

Meanwhile, Jefferson was keenly enjoying the turmoil. We 
wish it were possible to trace it all to his contrivance, for nothing 
could have served his purpose better. To have foreseen that the 
writing of a few simple lines would have awakened the militant 
republicanism of the country and have aroused the democratic 
impulses of the inert mass would have been complimentary to his 


1 New York Daily Advertiser, July 8, 1791. ‘ Independent Chronicle, June 23, 1791. 
2 Ibid., July 9, 1791. 5 Ibid., July 7, 1791. 
* Ibid., July 14, 1791. 6 Jbid., August 26, 1791. 7 Ibid. 


86, ‘JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


political genius. But this is not the only instance where a clever 
politician with the reputation of a magician has stumbled forward. 
There is no doubt that Jefferson was astonished and embarrassed 
on learning that the printer had made an unauthorized use of his 
personal note. He admitted to Washington that he had Adams’s 
writings in mind, but that nothing was more remote from his 
thoughts than of becoming ‘a contributor before the public.’ 
However, he was not impressed with the reflections on his taste. 
‘Their real fear,’ he added, ‘is that this popular and republican 
pamphlet... is likely... to wipe out all the unconstitutional 
doctrines which their bellwether, Davilla, has been preaching for a 
twelve-month.’! This explanation was enough for Knox, who 
wrote accordingly to Adams,? but not enough for Jefferson who 
sent a frank explanation to Adams with an expression of regret. In 
generous mood, the latter accepted the explanation with the pro- 
testation that their old friendship was ‘still dear to my heart,’ and 
that ‘there is no office I would not resign rather than give a just 
occasion for one friend to desert me.’ ® 

Madison, to whom Jefferson had sent a similar explanation, had 
assumed that there had been a mistake or an imposition, but he 
could see no reason for indignation on the part of Adams or his 
friends. ‘Surely,’ he wrote, ‘if it be innocent and decent for one 
servant of the public to write against its government, it cannot be 
very criminal or indecent in another to patronize a written defence 
of the principles on which that Government is founded.’ 4 

However much Jefferson may have regretted the unauthorized 
use of his letter, he rejoiced in its effect. He wrote Paine that the 
controversy had awakened the people, shown the “monocrats’ 
that the silence of the masses concerning the teachings of ‘Davilla’ 
did not mean that they had been converted ‘to the doctrine of 
king, lords and commons,’ and that they were ‘confirmed in their 
good old faith.’® The incident had established Jefferson in the 
public mind as the outstanding leader of democracy, had set the 
public tongue to wagging on politics again. More was involved in 
the pamphlets of Burke and Paine than differences over the French 
Revolution. The keynote of Burke’s was aristocracy and privilege; 


1 Jefferson’s Works, vin, 192. 2 Adams, Works, vim, 503. 8 Ihid., 505. 
4 Madison’s Writings, 1, 535. 6 Jefferson’s Works, vit, 223. 


PREMONITIONS OF BATTLE 87 


that of Paine’s was democracy and equal rights. The former was 
the gospel of the American Federalists; the latter the covenant of 
the American Democracy. Studying the reactions with his char- 
acteristic keenness, Jefferson was convinced that the time was ripe 
to mobilize for the inevitable struggle. » 


Vil 


‘What do you think of this scrippomony?’” Jefferson wrote to 
Edward Rutledge in the latesummer. ‘Ships are lying idle at the 
whartfs, buildings are stopped, capital withdrawn from commerce, 
manufactures, arts and agriculture to be employed in gambling, 
and the tide of public prosperity . . . is arrested in its course....I 
imagine that we shall hear that all the cash has quitted the extrem- 
ities of the nation and accumulated here.’! As he wrote, Jefferson 
had before him the report of the craze which had just reached him 
in a letter from Madison in New York. ‘Stock and scrip the sole 
domestic subjects of conversation ... speculations... carried on 
with money borrowed at from two and a half per cent a month to 
one per cent a week.’ ? 

Men grown reckless with the frenzy of the intoxication were re- 
_ sorting to fraud to rob the Government, many taking out adminis- 
tration papers for deceased soldiers who had left no heirs. ‘ By this 
knavery,’ wrote Madison at an earlier period, ‘a prodigious sum 
- will be unsaved by the public, and reward the worst of its citizens.’ 
And suppose one of the clerks of the account offices is not proof 
against the temptation? ® 

By the middle of the summer (July 10th) Bank stock had risen 
as much in the market in New York as in Philadelphia with the 
feeling that there was a certainty of gain. A scramble had set in 
‘for so much public plunder.’ The meticulously scrupulous Madi- 
son, with his lofty notions of official propriety, was shocked to find 
‘the members of the Legislature who were most active in pushing 
this job openly grasping the emoluments.’ Schuyler, the father- 
in-law of Hamilton, was to be the head of the directors of the Bank 
‘if the weight of the New York subscribers can effect it.’ Stock- 


1 Jefferson’s Works, viii, 232, 
# Madison’s Writings, 1, 540, 
8 Tbid., 1, 534. 


88 _ JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


jobbing monopolized all conversation. The coffee-houses buzzed 
with the gamblers.! 

Meanwhile, from the high-placed to the ordinary scamp, men 
maddened, by the money-itch, were resorting to ordinary crime to 
get possession of public paper. In some places clever counter- 
feiters were driving through the country under the pretext of exam- 
ining securities with the idea of purchase and cleverly exchanging 
the worthless for the real.2, In the South and in the remote parts 
of Maine, swindlers were scouring the woods for State notes, lying 
to the uninformed and ignorant about their value, and getting 
them for a song. ‘What must be the feelings of the widow and 
orphan,’ wrote a correspondent of a Philadelphia paper, ‘when 
they find themselves thus defrauded of a great part of their little 
all, and that, not unlikely, the earnings of their late husbands and 
fathers, who died in the service of their country, by these pests 
of society who ought to be despised?’ ? But greed knew no shame. 
An appalling picture: members of Congress feathering their nest 
through their legislative acts, counterfeiters robbing the unwary, 
common crooks stealing from the Government by posing as the 
administrators of the dead, and distinguished members of the 
Boston Bar, like Otis and Gore, speculating with their clients’ 
money without their knowledge or consent. 

So sinister was the situation that notes of warning began to ap- 
pear in the newspapers. The ‘Pennsylvania Gazette’ found that 
speculators had ‘turned raving mad, and others so agitated that 
they appear on the borders of insanity.’* Fenno tried vainly to 
restore sobriety to the drunk — for Hamilton himself was shocked 
and not a little concerned.> Better be careful about parting with 
Bank scrip, warned the ‘New York Daily Advertiser.’ Efforts were 


being made to buy up all the scrip in the city ‘and for this purpose — 


a powerful combination was formed ... on Saturday night to re- 
duce the price.’* Beware of another South Sea Bubble, warned 
‘Centinel’ in the same paper. ‘The National Bank stock has risen 
so high, so enormously above its real value, that no two trans- 
actions in the annals of history can be found to equal it...’? 


1 Madison’s Writings, 1, 538. 2 Maryland Journal, February 15, 1791. 
8 Pennsylvania Gazette, September 7, 1791. 4 August 17, 1791. 


§ Hamilton’s Works (to King), 1, 402. 6 August 8, 1791, 7 August 9, 1791, — 


PREMONITIONS OF BATTLE 89 


From Boston came similar stories of the madness. All the while 
the New York papers were publishing day-by-day quotations on 
the scrip. By August 15th the mania was at its height. ‘It has 
risen like a rocket,’ wrote an amused scribbler. ‘Like a rocket it 
will burst with a crack and down drops the rocket stick. Wha. 
goes up must come down — so take care of your pate, brother 
Jonathan.’? The craze was becoming ridiculous. The sane and the 
honest looked upon it as a spectacle. Above the angry cries in the 
market-place rang the laughter of the observers who kept their 
heads. Some put their scoffing into verse: 


‘What magic this among the people, 
That swells a Maypole to a steeple?’ 8 


Suddenly the bubble showed signs of bursting. A New York bank 
stopped discounting for some of the speculators. Messengers 
hurried forth with the ominous news, horses’ hoofs hammering the 
Jersey roads to Philadelphia, where there was consternation and a 
falling-off in buying.* Pay-day had not yet come, but it was on the 
way, and men began to regain their senses. 

Then came the emergence of the political phase. ‘Does history 
afford an instance,’ asked one observer, “where inequality in 
property, without any adequate consideration, ever before so 
suddenly took place in the world? or the basis of the power and in- 
fluence of an Aristocracy was created?’> A Boston paper com- 
mented significantly on the ease with which the mere opening and 
closing of the galleries of Congress could serve the purposes of 
speculation. ‘How easily might this be done should any member 
of Congress be inclined to speculate.’ ® 

Thus the talk of a ‘corrupt squadron’ in the First Congress was 
not the invention of Jefferson — it was the talk of the highways 
and the byways, the coffee-houses and the taverns, and we find it 
recurring in the correspondence of the public men of the period. 

1 August 13, 1791. ‘Scrips sold last night: Cash 212-202-210-206; 10 days, 216, 2173, 
214; 30 days, 223, 212, 215; 45 days, 216; 60 days, 219; Sept. 10, 224; Deliver and pay 
December 1, 235; Deliver October 1 and pay January 1, 242; Monday next, 207; Tuesday, 
2154, 217, 210.’ (New York Daily Advertiser.) 

2 Daily Advertiser, August 15, 1791. 3 New York Daily Advertiser. 

4 Daily Advertiser, August 17, 1791. — 


5 New York Daily Advertiser, September 21, 1791, 
6 Independent Chronicle, September 1, 1791. 


ho JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Everywhere sudden fortunes sprang up as if by magic. There was 
a rumbling and grumbling in the offing. With the people thinking 
more seriously of Madison’s fight for discrimination, he began to 
, loom along with Jefferson as a prospective leader against the ‘sys- 
_ tem.’ With the discovery that the law had been violated in the 
subscription of more than thirty shares, it was hoped that it would 
‘draw the attention of Madison . . . immediately on the meeting of 
Congress’ and that ‘the whole proceedings ... be declared nuga- 
tory.’} ; 

Then came the election of Bank directors in the fall, and indigna- 
tion flamed when the prizes went to leaders in the Congress that 
had created the Bank — to Rufus King, Samuel Johnson of North 
Carolina, William Smith of South Carolina, Jeremiah Wadsworth 
of the ‘fast sailing vessels,’ John Laurance of New York, William 
Bingham of Philadelphia, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, George 
Cabot, Fisher Ames, and Thomas Willing, the partner of Robert 
Morris. 

Members of Congress had speculated heavily and profitably on 
their knowledge of their own intent in legislation; they were own- 
ers of bank scrip of the Bank they created, and their leaders were 
on the board of directors. There was talk among the people of 
a ‘corrupt squadron,’ and Jefferson did not invent the term; he 
found it in the street and used it. Though Hamilton, scrupulously 
honest, was not involved in proceedings that were vicious, if not 
corrupt, many of his lieutenants were, and that, for the pur- 
poses of politics, made an issue. 

But Hamilton was in the saddle, booted and spurred, and riding 
hard toward the realization of his conception of government, fol- 
lowed by an army that fairly glittered with the brilliancy of many 
of his field marshals, and which was imposing in the financial, 
social, and cultural superiority of the rank and file; an army that — 
could count on the greater part of the press to publish its orders 
of the day, and on the beneficiaries of its policies to fill its cam- 
paign coffers. And it was at this juncture that Jefferson began 
the mobilization of an army that would seem uncouth and ragged 
by comparison. The cleavage was distinct; the ten-year war 
was on. 

1 Independent Chronicle, August 18, 1791, 


PREMONITIONS OF BATTLE 91 


ai 


As a preliminary to the story of the struggle, it is important 
to know more of the character and methods of the man who 
dared challenge Hamilton’s powerful array and something of the 


social atmosphere in Philadelphia where the great battles were 
fought. 


CHAPTER V 
THOMAS JEFFERSON: A PORTRAIT 


I 


N the personal appearance of Thomas Jefferson there was little 

to denote the powerful, dominating leader and strict discipli- 
narian that he was. Unlike Hamilton, he did not look the com- 
mander so much as the rather shy philosopher. The gruff Maclay, 
on seeing him for the first time, was disappointed with his slender 
frame, the looseness of his figure, and the ‘air of stiffness in his 
manner,’ while pleased with the sunniness of his face. He was of 
imposing height, being more than six feet, and slender without 
being thin.? All contemporaries who have left descriptions refer to 
the long, loosely jointed limbs, and none of them convey an im- 
pression of grace. His hair, much redder than that of Hamilton, 
was combed loosely over the forehead and at the side, and tied be- 
hind. His complexion was light, his eyes blue and usually mild in 
_ expression, his forehead broad and high. Beneath the eyes, his 
face was rather broad, the cheek-bones high, the chin noticeably 
long, and the mouth of generous size. The casual glance discovered 
more of benevolence than force, more of subtlety than pugnacity. 
Nor, in that day of lace and frills, was there anything in his garb 
to proclaim him of the élite. His enemies then, and ever since, 
have made too much of his loose carpet slippers and worn clothes, 


and the only thing they prove is that he may have had the Lin- 


colnian indifference to style. Long before he made his ‘pose’ in 
the President’s house for the benefit of the groundlings, we find a 
critic who was to be numbered among his followers complaining 
because his clothes were too small for his body.* The truth, no 
doubt, is that he dressed conventionally, because men must, and 
was careless of his attire. 

Certain it is that when she frst met him, Mrs. Bayard Smith, 


who had been unduly impressed with the Federalist references to : 


the ‘coarseness and vulgarity of his manners,’ was astonished at 
1 Maclay, 272. 2 Familiar Letters, 148. 8 Maclay, 272. 


THOMAS JEFFERSON: A PORTRAIT 93 


the contradiction of the caricature by the man. ‘So meek and 
mild, yet dignified in his manners, with a voice so soft and low, 
with a countenance so benign and intelligent’ she found him.! In 
truth there was enough dignity in his manner to discourage the 
stranger on a first approach, as Tom Moore found to his disgust. 
Even Mrs. Smith thought his ‘dignified and reserved air’ chill at 
first;? and a French admirer who made a sentimental journey to 
Monticello thought him somewhat cold and reserved.’* ‘The cold 
first look he always cast upon a stranger’ 4 appears too often in the 
observations of his contemporaries to have been imaginary. 

As some have found fault with his dress, others have criticized 
a slovenly way of sitting — ‘in a lounging manner, on one hip com- 
monly, with one of his shoulders elevated much above the other’; 5 
while another — a woman too — was charmed at the ‘free and 
easy manner’ in which he accepted a proffered chair.® The natural 
deduction from the contradictions is that he seated himself as 
comfortably as possible with little regard to the picture in the pose. 
There is a manifest absurdity in the idea that the man who moved 
familiarly in the most cultured circles of the most polished capital 
in Europe could have been either impossible in dress or boorish in 
manner. | : 

But there is one unpleasant criticism of his manner that cannot 
be so easily put aside — a shiftiness in his glance which bears out 
the charge of his enemies that he was lacking in frankness. The 
most democratic member of the first Senate, meeting him for the 
first time, was disappointed to find that ‘he had a rambling vacant 
look, and nothing of that firm collected deportment which I ex- 
pected would dignify the presence of a Secretary or Minister.’ ’ 
Another found that ‘when speaking he did not look at his auditor, 
but cast his eyes toward the ceiling or anywhere but at the eye of 
his auditor.’ ® This weakness was possibly overemphasized, for he 
was notoriously shy. 

Aside from this, there is abundant evidence that there was an 
ineffable charm in his manner. One who objected to his ‘shifty 
glance’ was favorably impressed with ‘the simplicity and sobriety’ 


1 Mrs. Smith, 6. 2 Ibid., 6-7. 8 Liancourt, m1, 157. 
# Parton on the Moore incident, 11, 115-19, 5 Maclay, 272. 
6 Mrs. Smith, 6-7. 7 Maclay, 272. 8 Familiar Letters, 149, 


94 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


of his deportment, and found that while ‘he was quiet and unob- 
trusive...a stranger would perceive that he was in the presence 
of one who was not a common man.’! He was free of the affecta- 
tions of pedantry, courteous and kindly, modest and tolerant. 
Thus he appeared to excellent advantage in conversation, and, 
with one exception, all who knew him and have left their impres- 
sions found him an entertaining and illuminating talker. Maclay, 
who was certainly not the most competent of judges, thought his 
conversation ‘loose and rambling,’ and yet admitted that ‘he scat- 
tered information wherever he went, and some even brilliant senti- 
ments sparkled from him.’? It is probable that the gout-racked 
radical confused conversation with set speeches, and quite as pos- 
sible that on this particular occasion, when Jefferson was meeting 
with a curious senatorial committee, he was not inclined to tell all 
he knew. 

Certainly the polished nobleman, familiar with the most intel- 
lectual circles of Paris, who found his ‘conversation of the most 
agreeable kind,’ and that he possessed ‘a stock of information not 
inferior to that of any other man,’ and ‘in Europe .. . would hold a 
distinguished rank among men of letters,’ was quite as competent 
a judge as the Senator from the wilderness of Pennsylvania.’ 
Among men his manner of conversation was calm and deliberate, 
without the Johnsonian ez-cathedra touch, and yet he “spoke like 
one who considered himself as entitled to deference.’* Among 
friends, and particularly women, he appears to have been deferen- 
tial and captivating in his tactful kindness. Then when, ‘with a 
manner and voice almost femininely soft and gentle,’ he ‘entered 
into conversation on the commonplace topics of the day,’ at least 
one woman found that ‘there was something in his manner, his 
countenance and voice that at once unlocked [her] heart.’ 5 

Such was the Jefferson seen superficially by his contemporaries. 


II 
Those who prefer to think of Jefferson as an aristocrat, born to 
the purple, who departed from the paths of his fathers, refer only 
to the maternal ancestry. The American founder of this branch 


1 Familiar Letters, 148. 2? Maclay, 272. 3 Liancourt, m1, 157. 
4 Familiar Letters, 148. ’ Mrs. Smith, 6-7, 


THOMAS JEFFERSON: A PORTRAIT 95 


of the family liked to think of himself as the descendant of gentle- 
men of title and of the half-brother of Queen Mary. Jefferson pre- 
ferred to dismiss this claim on the aristocracy with the statement 
that his mother’s family traced ‘their pedigree far back in England 
and Scotland, to which let every one ascribe the faith and merit he 
chooses.” From the Randolphs he probably inherited his love of 
beauty, his fondness for luxury, but they failed utterly to transmit 
to him any aristocratic notions of government. There was a reason 
— his father was a middle-class farmer, and it was from him and 
his early environment that he received his earliest and most lasting 
political impressions. 

This father was no ordinary man. Physically a giant, he was 
big in mind and strong in character. By the light of the log fire in 
the evenings, he was wont to read Shakespeare, Swiit, and Addi- 
son to his family. An ardent Whig with advanced democratic 
ideas, he as a magistrate manifested sympathy for the plain peo- 
ple. His thousand acres at Shadwell were in the wilderness and 
on the frontier, and his son was as much a Westerner in his boy- 
hood as is the boy of Idaho to-day, for the West isa relative term. 

This Western boy at the most impressionable age was sent to 
school in Louisa County, which was then the hot-bed of radical 
democracy and Presbyterian dissent. The natives about him were 
in buckskin breeches and Indian moccasins, and, with no coat over 
their rough hunting shirts, they covered their heads with coon- 
skin caps. It was a long cry from the polished circles of Boston, 
New York, and Philadelphia to this typical Western scene; if one 
was the East, the other was the West. The small proprietor farm- 
_ ers lived in crude cabins, and theirs was the hard lot of the pioneer. 
Thus Jefferson’s training was that of the Westerner.? 

The boy was father to the man. When he entered college at 
Williamsburg, he found himself in the headquarters of the aristoc- 
racy, for there, at the capital, the lords of the land had their win- 
ter homes where lavish hospitality was displayed. Into this soci- 
ety Jefferson was thrown, and he moved therein as to the manor 
born — at heart a Western man with Eastern polish.2 It was not 
for nothing that there was Randolph blood in his veins. 


1 Randall, 1, 14. 
2 Dodd, Statesmen of the Old South, 3-4. 3 Ibid., 9. 


96 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Even as he moved among the hard-drinking, fox-hunting imita- 
tors of the English squires, his sympathies were enlisted in the 
growing democratic movement of the small farmers among the up- 
per rivers, the tobacco-growers, the hunters and trappers of the 
Alleghany slopes. The western counties, then the western frontier, 
had been populated by the Scotch-Irish and Germans — earnest, 
hard-working, hard-thinking men, who wrestled with nature as 
with their consciences, built churches in the woods, and school- 
houses in the clearing. These men were democrats, and their 
cause became the cause of Jefferson even while he was in college. 
Volumes have been written to explain Jefferson, but it was re- 
served for Professor William E. Dodd to do it in a paragraph: 

It is not difficult . . . to see how the great principle of Jefferson’s life — 
absolute faith in democracy — came to him. He was the product of the 
first West in American history; he grew up with men who ruled their 


country well, who fought the Indians valiantly. ... Jefferson loved his 
backwoods neighbors, and he, in turn, was loved by them.! 


If in college he was confirming his faith in democracy, born of 
his schooling in the land of the small farmers, he was burnishing 
his weapons for the fight. It is significant that he disliked Black- 
stone and liked Coke because he found the former a teacher of 
Toryism and the latter a reflector of the philosophy of the Whigs. 
His training in the law was thorough, for he studied under George 
Wythe, with whom both Marshall and Clay received their legal 
schooling. The friendship of Professor Small encouraged his nat- 
ural spirit of toleration and investigation; and at the ‘palace’ 
of Francis Fauquier, the gay and brilliant royal governor — ‘a 
gentleman of the school of Louis XV translated into England by 
Charles II, and into English by Lord Chesterfield’? he formed 
his literary tastes and learned the virtues of literary style. Thus 


assiduous in his studies, reasonably circumspect in his morals, and 


profiting immeasurably by contact with superior minds, he was 

receiving an intensive preparation for his future labors. In the 

seclusion of his room he communed with Coke and Milton, Har- 

rington and Locke, and the time was to come when his most not- 

able literary production was to disclose, in word and phrase, the 

influence of the latter. Locke, not Rousseau, was the well from 
1 Todd, Statesmen of the Old South, 23. # Parton’s Jefferson, 1, 27. 


“#4 


THOMAS JEFFERSON: A PORTRAIT 97 


which he drew; and there is no sillier assertion in history than that 
his democracy was born of association with the men of the French 
Revolution. 


IIt 


Long before there were levelers in France, Jefferson was a leveler 
in Virginia; and because he was a leveler in Virginia, the reaction- 
aries who resented his reforms were afterward to charge his demo- 
cracy to theinfluence of the levelers of Paris. His democracy was 
inherent, in part inherited from a pioneer father. His dislike of 
the aristocratic system amounted to a prejudice, and he could not 
bear the novels of Scott because of his detestation of the institu- 
tions of medieval times.!. Having written the Declaration of In- 
dependence in the house of a bricklayer, he declined a reélection to 
Congress to enter the House of Burgesses in Virginia to revamp 
the institutions of the State along democratic lines. When he fin- 
ished his work there, he had made himself one of the foremost 
democrats of all times — and the French Revolution was still 
in the distance. 

The Virginia system had been made for caste society; the landed 
aristocracy were as much a caste as that in England — minus the 
titles. They had the same love of land, the same obsession that the 


alienation of any part of their possessions was treason to the fam- 


ily. Through the system of entail, the lands and slaves of the aris- 
tocracy could be passed on down through the generations, proof 
against the extravagance-and inefficiency of the owners and the 
attacks of creditors. The law of primogeniture was designed to 
serve the same general end of preventing the disruption of the 
great estates. With a fine audacity, Jefferson sallied forth quite 
gayly to attack them both. Even Henry thought this was radical- 
ism gone mad. Pendleton was more hurt than outraged. The aris- 
tocratic members of his mother’s family looked upon him as a 


- matricide. Undaunted by the hate engendered, he put his hand to 


the plough and kept it there until he had ploughed the field and 
prepared it for a democratic harvest. His friend Pendleton begged 


a compromise on primogeniture giving the eldest son a double 
share of theland. ‘Yes,’ replied the leveler, ‘when he can eat twice 
1 Randall, m1, 448, 


98 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


the allowance of food and do double the allowance of work.’ It was 
his purpose to eradicate ‘every fibre of ancient or future aristo- 
cracy.’ The outraged landed aristocracy never forgave him. He 
was the first American to invite the hate of a class, and from the 
beginning he turned his back on the aristocracy and made his ap- 
peal to the middle-class yeomanry.? All this was behind him when 
he went to Paris before the Revolution there began. There the 
tall, slender American in the elegant house on the Grande Route 
des Champs Elysées, with its extensive gardens and court, was an 
impressive figure. ‘You replace Doctor Franklin, I hear,’ said 
Vergennes, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. ‘I succeed him,’ Jef- 
ferson replied; ‘nobody could replace him.’ There could have 
been no more ingratiating reply, for his predecessor had been 
greatly admired and loved. : 

No one could have found the conversation of the salons and 
dinner tables more congenial. His manners were those of a man of 
the world, and he shared the French fondness for speculative talk, 
and the French knack of spicing gravity with frivolity. Even his 
table tastes were similar. He ate sparingly and preferred the light 
wines. Both his natural hospitality and his respect for the dfgnity 
of his position spread the reputation of his lavish table; and while 
he gave no great parties, gay and frequent dinners were the rule. 
Lafayette ran in and out constantly; members of the diplomatic 
set found Jefferson’s house an agreeable meeting-place; the young 
French officers who had served in America liked his company, and 
De la Tude, the wit, who had served thirty-five years in prison for 
writing an epigram on Pompadour, enlivened many an evening 
with his reminiscences. American tourists were captivated by his 
civilities, introductions to celebrities, itineraries for profitable 
trips. Like Franklin before him, he charmed the beautiful women 
of the court with his wit and humor, and the eloquence of his con- 
versation. He loved the promenades and shops, and was constantly 
alert for something unusual to send his friends at home — rare 
books for Madison, Monroe, and Wythe, a portable table for 
Madison, an artistic lamp for Lee. And yet he was far from an 
elegant idler, and his days were laboriously passed; mornings at his 
office, afternoons given to country walks, evenings to society, art, 

1 Autobiography, 1, 77. 2? Fiske, 148, 


THOMAS JEFFERSON: A PORTRAIT 99 


music. He found time for elaborate and illuminating reports that 
are models in diplomatic literature and which exacted tribute from 
even John Marshall. Feeling frequently the need of absolute se- 
clusion for his work, he had rooms in the Carthusian Monastery 
on Mount Calvary where silence was enjoined outside the rooms, 
but where he had the privileges of the garden. 

‘I am much pleased with the people of this country,’ he wrote a 
lady. ‘The roughness of the human mind is so thoroughly rubbed 
off with them, that it seems one might glide through a whole life 
without a jostle.’! And in another letter, the same impression: 
‘Here it seems a man might pass a life without encountering a 
single rudeness.’? But if he loved the society of Paris, he was not, 
like Morris, seduced into an acceptance of its system. His passion 
for democracy did not permit him to judge the happiness of a 
nation by the luxuries of the court and aristocracy. He struck out 
into the country to judge for himself of the condition of the peas- 
ants, looked into the pots on the fire to see what they ate, felt 
their beds to see if they were comfortable. He inquired into the 
wages and the working conditions of the artisans of the cities — and 
his cd&clusions were unavoidable, of coyrse. ‘It isa fact,’ he wrote, 
‘in spite of the mildness of their governors, the people are ground 
to powder by their form of government. Of twenty million people 
supposed to be in France, I am of opinion there are nineteen mil- 
lion more wretched, more accursed in every circumstance of hu- 
man existence than the most conspicuously wretched individual 
in the whole United States.’* And to another: ‘I find the general 
fate of humanity here most deplorable. The truth of Voltaire’s 
observation offers itself perpetually, that every man here is either 
the hammer or the anvil.’ He was shocked by a system that 
dedicated the sons of peasants as cannon fodder in remote wars 
precipitated by the whims of a prostitute; that winked at the de- 
bauchery of their wives and daughters; that gave men to the Bas- 
tile for the expression of a criticism; that crushed the people with 
intolerable taxation to sustain the luxury of a few; that forced the 
poor to live on food not fit for a stray dog in a city slums, and 
which awed the masses into submission to such conditions by the 


1 Works (to Mrs. Trist), v, 151. 8 Ibid. (to Bellini), y, 151. 
3 Ibid. (to Mrs. Trist), v, 81-82. 4 Ibid. (to Bellini), v, 151-54. 


ore Ne 


| 
100 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON © 


bayonets of the soldiery. This was the France of which he thought 
in the day when his sympathy with the Revolution was to damn 
him with the Federalists’ taunt of ‘Jacobin’ and ‘anarchist.’ 

Such being his observations and views, he rejoiced in the popular 
awakening in the dawning days of the Revolution. Witnessing the 
meeting of the Assembly of the Notables, a fascinated spectator of 
the razing of the Bastile, listening, deeply moved, to the auda- 
cious eloquence of Mirabeau, he wrote, with the joy of the re- 
former, to Washington that ‘the French nation has been awakened 
by our Revolution.’ It was in those days that. Gouverneur Morris, 
the friend of Hamilton, was accustomed to drop in on Jefferson 
for a chat on the situation, and their friendly disagreements were 
soon to appear in a party division in America. ‘He and I differ,’ 
wrote Morris in his diary, ‘in our system of politics. He with all 
the leaders of liberty here is desirous of annihilating distinctions of 
order.’? And yet he was not hostile to the King or the monarchy. 
He hoped for reforms, freely granted. Louis he found ‘irascible, 
rude, very limited in his understanding,’ with ‘no mistress,’ but 
governed too much by the Queen — ‘devoted to pleasure and ex- 
pense, and not remarkable for any other vices or virtues.’? As the 
storm-clouds lowered and the easy-going monarch remained inert, 
he became less tolerant. ‘The King, long in the habit of drowning 
his cares in wine, plunges deeper and deeper. The Queen cries but 
sins on. The Count d’Artois is detested.?? And ‘a month later: 
‘The King goes for nothing. He hunts.one half the day, is drunk 
the other, and signs whatever he is bid.’ 4 

As the future Terrorists ascended from the cellars and descended 
from the garrets, and occasional riots gave premonitory signs of 
the bloody days ahead, he reported to Jay that the rioting was the 
work of the ‘abandoned banditti of Paris,’ and had no ‘professed 
connection with the great national reformation going on.’® 

All this time he was being constantly consulted by Lafayette 
and the moderate leaders who were to become the members of the 
attractive but unfortunate party of the Gironde. They even met 
at his dinner table to make plans, without notifying him of their 


1 Morris, Diary, 1, 101. 

2 Domestic Life (letter to Madison), 155; Works, 1, 131-38. 

§ Domestic Life (letter to Adams), 156, 4 Ibid. (to Jay), 156. 
§ Ibid. (to Jay), 159. 


THOMAS JEFFERSON: A PORTRAIT 101 


intent, and his voluntary explanation to the Minister was re- 
ceived with the expression of a hope tLat he might be able to assist 
in an accommodation of differences. He did, in fact, propose a 
plan, which, had it been accepted, might have saved the mon- 
archy. It was his suggestion that Louis step forward with a char- 
ter in his hands, granting liberty of the person, of conscience, of 
the press, a trial by jury, an annual legislature with the power of 
taxation, and with a ministry responsible to the people.! These 
associations and these views are conclusive as to the absurdity 
that he was permeated with the theories of Jacobinism and 
brought them back to the United States. He was the same kind of 
Jacobin as Lafayette. His interest was the interest in democracy 
and popular rights that he had taken with him when he sailed for 
Europe. Mirabeau was still laboring to save the monarchy with 
reforms when Jefferson returned to America on leave. 


IV 


Jefferson was a humanitarian ahead of his time. His humanity 
spoke above the passions of the Revolution in his letter to Patrick 
Henry against the mistreatment of the German prisoners. ‘Is an 
enemy so execrable,’ he wrote, ‘that though in captivity his wishes 
and comforts are to be disregarded and even crossed? I think not. 
It is for the benefit of mankind to mitigate the horrors of war as 
much as possible.’? These captives, interned near Monticello, 
came to love the master on the hill for his efforts to lighten the 
burdens of their captivity.’ A little later, in the Virginia Legisla- 
ture, we find him opposing the death penalty except for treason and 
murder, and the policy cf working convicts on the highways and 
canals. ‘Exhibited as.a public spectacle,’ he wrote, ‘with shaved 
heads and mean clothing, working on the highroads produced in 
the criminals such a prostration of self-respect, as, instead of 
reforming, plunged them into the most desperate and hardened 
depravity.’ It was novel then to hear men speaking of reform 
instead of punishment. 

That this humanitarian impulse was not confined to people at a 


1 Works (letter to Lafayette), vu, 370; (to De St. Etienne), vm, 370-72; (the Charter), 
vil, 372-74. 
2 Ibid., tv, 72. 8 Ibid. (to De Unger), tv, 138-39, 4 Autobiography, 1, 72. 


102 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


distance is shown in his relations to his own servants, both the 
employees and the slaves. A woman of fashion commented on ‘the 
most perfect servants at the White House’ during his eight years 
there and the significant circumstance that ‘none left.’! But we 
must turn to his relations with his slaves to find him at his best. 
One picture will suffice. It is on the occasion of his return to Mon- 
ticello from his French mission. At the foot of the hill all the slaves 
in their gaudiest attire are assembled to greet him. The carriage 
appears down the road. The slaves, laughing, shouting, rush for- 
ward to welcome him, unhitch the horses to draw the carriage up 
the steep hill, some pulling, some pushing, and others huddled in a 
dark mass close around the vehicle. Some kiss his hands, others 
his feet, and itis long after he reaches the house before he is per- 
mitted to enter. This was long before the day when correspond- 
ents with cameras pursued public men and demonstrations were 
staged.? Here was a master who loved his slaves. 

Nor can there be any possible doubt as to his hostility to slayv- 
ery. One of the features of his Virginia reforms was abolition. 
While he failed, he never doubted that ultimately the chains would 
fall. ‘Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than 
that these people are to be free,’ he wrote in his ‘Autobiography.’ 
A little later, referring to his strictures on slavery in his ‘Notes on 
Virginia,’ he expressed a desire to get them to the young men in 
the colleges. ‘It is to them I look, to the rising generation, and not 
to the one now in power, for these great reformations.’* Declining 
membership in a society for abolition in France on the ground that 
his official status would make improper a demonstration against 
an institution his own people were retaining, he said that ‘it is 
decent of me to avoid too public a demonstration of my wishes to 
see it [slavery] abolished.’® Without any of this evidence, his 
hostility to slavery would be irrefutably established by the Ordi- 
nance of the Northwest Territory, in the handwriting of Jefferson 
in the archives of the Nation, prohibiting slavery in any of the 
States that might be carved therefrom after the year 1800. 


1 Mrs. Wharton, 391. 2 Parton’s Jefferson, 1, 344. VoL E17. 
4 Works, v, 3-4: letter to Chastellus, 5 Ibid., v1, 428: to Warville, 


THOMAS JEFFERSON: A PORTRAIT 103 


Vv 


Such is the persistency of falsehood that Jefferson has come 
down to us vaguely as an atheist and an enemy of the Christian 
religion. Since this charge is to play a part in the political story 
we are about to tell, it calls for some attention. He was brought up 
in the Church of England, and his earliest recollection was of say- 
ing the Lord’s Prayer when his dinner was delayed.! He planned 
at least one church and contributed to the erection of others, gave 
freely to Bible Societies, and liberally to the support of the clergy. 
He attended church with normal regularity, taking his prayer book 
to the services and joining in the responses and prayers of the con- 
gregation. No human being ever heard him utter a word of pro- 
fanity. During the period of his social ostracism by the intolerant 
partisans of Philadelphia, he passed many evenings with Dr. Rush 
in conversation on religion.? ‘I am a Christian,’ he once said, ‘in 
the only sense in which Jesus wished any one to be — sincerely 
attached to his doctrines in preference to all others.” On one oc- 
casion when a man of distinction expressed his disbelief in the 
truths of the Bible, he said, ‘Then, sir, you have studied it to 
little purpose.’ While the New England pulpits were ringing with 
denunciations of this ‘infidel,’ and old ladies, unable to detect the 
false witness of the partisan clergy, were solemnly hiding their 
Bibles to prevent their confiscation by the ‘atheist’ in the Presi- 
dent’s House, he was spending his nights in the codification of the 
‘Morals of Jesus,’ and through the remainder of his life he was to 
read from this every night before retiring.* In his last days he 
spent much time reading the Greek dramatists and the Bible, 
dwelling in conversation on the superiority of the moral system of 
Christ over all others. In his dying hour, after taking leave of his 
family, he was heard to murmur, ‘Lord, now lettest Thy servant 
depart in peace.’ 5 

The reason for the myth created against him is not far to seek. 
Just as the landed aristocracy of Virginia pursued him with in- 
creasing venom because of his land reforms, the clergy hated him 


1 Randall, 1, 17. 2 Ibid., 11, 556-58; letter to Rush. 

3 Ibid., 671-76. 

4 Iind.; also see The Thomas Jefferson Bible, edited by Henry Jackson. 
§ Randall, m1, 547. 


104 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


for forcing the separation of Church and State. When he made 
the fight for this reform, it was a crime not to baptize a child 
into the Episcopal Church; a crime to bring a Quaker into the 
colony; and, according to the law, a heretic could be burned. 
If the latter law was not observed, that compelling all to pay 
tithes regardless of their religious affiliations and opinions was 
rigidly enforced. This outraged Jefferson’s love of liberty. The 
Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists, who were making in- 
roads on the membership of the Established Church, were prose- 
cuted, and their ministers were declared disturbers of the peace 
and thrown into jail like common felons. Patrick Henry and his 
followers fought Jefferson’s plan for a disestablishment — but he 
won.! The ‘atheist’ law, which was never forgiven by the minis- 
ters of Virginia and Connecticut, was simple and brief: 

No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious wor- 
ship, place or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, 
molested or burdened in his mind or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on 
account of his religious opinions or belief; but all men shall be free to 
profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of re- 
ligion, and the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their 
civil capacities. 


Here we have the secret of the animus of the clergy of the time 
— but there were other reasons. In his ‘Notes on Virginia’ he did 
not please the orthodox, and Dr. Mason, a fashionable political 
minister of New York City, exposed him in the pulpit, holding 
him up to scorn as a ‘profane philosopher’ and an “ infidel.’ Dis- 
cussing the theory that the marine shells found on the high moun- 
tains were proof of the universal deluge, Jefferson had rejected it. 
‘Aha,’ cried Mason, ‘he derides the Mosaic account’; he ‘sneers 
at the Scriptures’ and with ‘malignant sarcasm.’ When Jefferson, 
referring to the tillers of the soil, wrote that they were ‘the chosen 
people of God if ever He had a chosen people,’ and referred to 
Christ as ‘good if ever man was,’ the minister charged him with 
‘profane babbling.’ 2 

His view of creation is set forth in a letter discussing a work 
by Whitehurst. He believed that a Supreme Being created the 
earth and its inhabitants; that if He created both, He could have 

1 Dodd, Statesmen of the Old South, 36. 2 Randall, m1, 620-22. 


THOMAS JEFFERSON: A PORTRAIT 105 


created both at once, or created the earth and waited ages for it 
to get form itself before He created man; but he believed that 
it was created in a state of fluidity and not in its present solid 
form. This was his infidelity. He probably did not believe that 
Jonah was swallowed by the whale — and that was enough to 
damn him. But if he was not a Christian, the pulpits are teem- 
ing with atheists to-day. 


VI 


We have seen that Hamilton had no faith in the Constitution, 
but did yeoman service for its ratification; we have the charge 
that Jefferson was hostile to both; and the truth is that he was 
hostile to neither and favorable to both. The evidence is over- 
whelming. 

When the new form of government was under consideration, 
he proposed ‘to make the States one in everything connected with 
foreign nations, and several as to everything purely domestic,’ and 
to separate the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.? He 
was bitterly hostile to any plan based on the monarchical idea, and 
advised its friends “to read the fable of the frogs who solicited 
Jupiter for a King.’ When the Convention met, he wrote Adams 
that it was ‘really an assembly of demigods,’ but regretted that 
they began their deliberations ‘by so abominable a precedent as 
that of tying up the tongues of the members.’* His first impres- 
sions of the completed document were unfavorable. In a letter to 
Adams he complained of the reéligibility of the President. To 
another correspondent he complained that the proposed system 
would merge the States into one without protecting the people 
with a bill of rights.® 

Writing to Madison, he went more into detail, balancing the 
good against the bad. He liked the separation of the departments, 
endorsed the lodging of the power of initiating money bills with 
the representatives of the people, and was ‘captivated with the 


' Works, v1, 11-15; to Charles Thompson. 

2 Ibid., 227-29 (to Edward Carrington); 269-71 (to J. Blair). 

3 Ibid., 296-301 (to Benjamin Hawkins and George Wythe); 231-32 (to Count Del 
Vermi). : 

4 Ibid., 285-89; to John Adams. 5 Ibid., 368. 

6 Ibid., 378-83; to William Carmichael. 


106 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON : 


compromise of the opposite claims of the great and little States fe 
but he insisted that a bill of rights ‘is what the people are entitled 
to against every government on earth, general or particular, and 
what no just government should refuse or rest in inference.’ Pro- 
fessing himself ‘no friend to a very energetic government’ as ‘al- 
ways oppressive,’ he added that should the people approve the Con- 
stitution in all its parts he should ‘concur in it cheerfully in hopes 
that they will amend it whenever they think it works wrong.’ ! 

Little more than a month later he had become an ardent friend 
of ratification. ‘I wish with all my soul,’ he wrote, ‘that the nine 
first Conventions may accept the Constitution, because this may 
secure to us the good it contains, which I think great and impor- 
tant. But I equally wish that the four latest Conventions, which- 
ever they may be, may refuse to accede to it till a declaration of 
rights is annexed.’ ? 

When the Massachusetts Convention accepted with “perpetual 
instructions to her Delegates to endeavor to secure reforms,’ he 
was delighted,* and the same day he wrote another correspondent 
of his pleasure at the progress made toward ratification. ‘Indeed 
I have presumed that it would gain on the public mind as I con- 
fess it has on my own.’* When South Carolina acted, he wrote 
K. Rutledge his congratulations. ‘Our government wanted brac- 
ing,’ he said. ‘Still we must take care not to run from one extreme 
to another; not to brace too high.’ When the requisite nine States 
had ratified, he wrote Madison in a spirit of rejoicing. ‘It is a good 
canvas on which some strokes only want retouching. What these 
are I think are sufficiently manifested by the general voice from 
North to South which calls for a bill of rights.’ 6 

After the ratification, he wrote Madison in praise of ‘The Fed- 
eralist,’ describing it as ‘the best commentary on government 
ever written,’ and admitting that it had ‘rectified’ him on many 
- points.” In the same vein he wrote to Washington, expressing the 
hope that a bill of rights would be speedily added.® In the spring of 


1 Works, v1, 385-93. 

? [bid., 425-27. I have the authority of Josephus Daniels for a tradition in North Caro- 
lina that such a letter in the hands of Willie Jones was responsible for the failure of the first 
Convention there to ratify. The letter is apparently lost. 

8 Ibid., vu, 26-30; to Carmichael. * Ibid., 36-39; to Colonel Carrington. 

§ Ibd., 79-88. 6 Iiid., 93-99, 7 Ibid., 183-87, 8 Ibid., 223-31. 


THOMAS JEFFERSON: A PORTRAIT 107 


1789 he wrote another that the Constitution was ‘unquestionably 
the wisest ever yet presented to men.”! And after the Bill of Rights 
had been added, he wrote to Lafayette that ‘the opposition to the 
Constitution has almost totally disappeared’ and that ‘the amend- 
ments proposed by Congress have brought over almost all’ of the 
objectors.? 

Years afterward, when he wrote his ‘Autobiography,’ he re- 
viewed his reactions on the document: ‘I received a copy early in 
November,’ he wrote, ‘and read and contemplated its provisions, 
with great satisfaction. ... The absence of express declarations, 
ensuring freedom of religious worship, freedom of the press, free- 
dom of the person under the uninterrupted protection of the Ha- 
beas Corpus & trial by jury in civil as well as in criminal cases ex- 
cited my jealousy; and the reéligibility of the President for life I 
quite disapproved. I expressed freely in letters to my friends, and 
most particularly to Mr. Madison and General Washington, my 
approbations and objections.’* His recollections were true to the 
facts as conclusively shown in the correspondence to which refer- 
ence has been made. 

He was no more opposed to the Constitution and its ratifica- 
tion than he was an atheist. 


Vil 


This brings us to Jefferson the creator and leader of a party, and 
his methods of management. Here he was without a peer in the 
mastery of men. He intuitively knew men, and when bent upon it 
could usually bend them to his will. He was a psychologist and 
could easily probe the minds and hearts of those he met. ~In-his 
understanding of mass psychology, he had no equal. When a 
measure was passed or a policy adopted in Philadelphia, he knew 
the reactions in the woods of Georgia without waiting for letters 
and papers. This rare insight into the mass mind made him a bril- 
liantly successful propagandist. In every community he had his 
correspondents with whom he communicated with reasonable 
regularity, doing more in this way to mould and direct the policies 
of his party than could have been done in any other way. Seldom 
has there lived a more tireless and voluminous letter-writer. With 

1 Works, vu, 319-24. 2 Ibid., vi, 10-13. 8 Autobiography, 1, 118. 


108 ‘JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


all the powerful elements arrayed against him, he appreciated the 
importance of the press as did few others. ‘I desired you in my 
last to send me the newspapers, notwithstanding the expense,’ he 
wrote a friend from Paris.’ Believing that the people, in possession 
of the facts, would reach reasonable conclusions, he considered 
newspapers a necessary engine of democracy. ‘If left to me,’ he 
once wrote, ‘to decide whether we should have a government with- 
out newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should 
not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter.’? There is not a 
scintilla of evidence to confute his stout contention that he never 
wrote for the papers anonymously, but the evidence piles moun- 
tain high to prove that he constantly inspired the tone of the 
party press. 

In his personal contacts he was captivating — a master of diplo- 
macy and tact, born of his intuitive knowledge of men. Perhaps 
no better illustration of his cleverness in analyzing men can be 
found than in his letter to Madison on De Moustier, a newly ap- 
pointed French Minister to the United States. ‘De M. is remark- 
ably communicative. With adroitness he may be pumped of any- 
thing. His openness is from character, not affectation. An inti- 
macy with him may, on this account, be politically valuable.’ * 

In his leadership we find more of leading than of driving. He had 
a genius for gently and imperceptibly insinuating his own views 
into the minds of others and leaving them with the impression that 
they had conceived theideas and convinced Jefferson. To Madison 
this was a source of keen delight.‘ Jefferson was the original ‘Easy 
Boss.’ His tact was proverbial. He never sought to overshadow or 
overawe. Inferior men were not embarrassed or depressed in his 
presence. He was amazingly thoughtful and considerate. In a 
company he instinctively went to the assistance of the neglected. 
Thus at a dinner party, a guest, long absent from the country, and 
unknown to the diners, was left out of the conversation and ig- 
nored. In a momentary silence, Jefferson turned to him. ‘To 
you, Mr. C., we are indebted for this benefit —’ he said, ‘no one 
deserves more the gratitude of his country.’ The other guests were 
all attention. ‘Yes, sir, the upland rice which you sent from Al- 


1 Works, v, 147; to F. Hopkinson. 2 Tbid., vi, 55-58; to Carrington. 
3 Thid., 335-36, 4 Randall, 1, 404-05. 


THOMAS JEFFERSON: A PORTRAIT 109 


giers, and which thus far succeeds, will, when generally adopted by 
the planters, prove an inestimable blessing to our Southern States.’ 
After that the neglected guest became the lion of the dinner.! 
Thoughtfulness in small things — this entered not a little into 
Jefferson’s hold on his followers. 

It was at the dinner table that he planned many of his battles. 
He did not care for the stormy and contentious atmosphere of a 
caucus. He was not an orator. In the Continental Congress he 
was disgusted by the ‘rage for debate.’ 2? Later he was to find his 
lot in the Cabinet intolerable because he and Hamilton were 
constantly pitted against each other ‘like cocks in a pit.’ He was 
not afraid of a fight, but the futility of angry controversy repelled 
him. It was this which made him a delightful dinner host — all 
controversial subjects that might offend were taboo. If his position 
were warmly controverted, he changed the subject tactfully. It 
was never the opposition that interested him, but the reason for it; 
and with rare subtlety he would seek to obliterate the prejudice, 
if it were prejudice, or to remove the misunderstanding if it were 
ignorance of facts. Thus he won many victories through a seeming 
retreat.’ 

Unescapable quarrels and separations were minor tragedies to 
him. He long sought to get along with Hamilton. He advised his 
daughters to be tolerant of disagreeable people and acted on his 
own advice. Fiske has explained him in a sentence: ‘He was in no 
wise lacking in moral courage, but his sympathies were so broad 
and tender that he could not breathe freely in an atmosphere of 
strife.’4 Thus considerate of his foes, he never hurt the sensibilities 
of his friends through offensive methods. He liked to gather his 
lieutenants about him at the table and ‘talk it out’ — each man 
free to give his views. Here he ironed out differences, dominat- 
ing by the superiority of his intellect and fascinating personality 
while appearing singularly free from domination. 

In his power of self-control Jefferson had another advantage 
over his leading political opponents. There was something un- 
canny in his capacity to simulate ignorance of the hate that often 
encompassed him. To the most virulent of his foes he was the pink 


1 Mrs. Smith, 389. 2 Autobiography, 1, 90. 
3 Randall, 1, 403-04. 4 Fiske, 154. 


110 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


of courtesy. He mastered others by mastering himself. And be- 
cause he was master of himself, he had another advantage — he 
kept his judgment clear as to the capacity and character of his 
opponents. One may search in vain through the letters of Hamil- 
ton for expressions other than those of contemptuous belittlement 
of his political foes. Jefferson never made that mistake. He con- 
ceded Hamilton’s ability and admired it. Visitors at Monticello, 
manifesting surprise at finding busts by Ceracchi of Hamilton and 
Jefferson, facing each other across the hall, elicited the smiling 
comment — ‘opposite in death as in life.’ There never would 
have been a bust of Jefferson at ‘The Grange.’ Through the long 
years of estrangement with Adams, Jefferson kept the way clear 
for the restoration of their old relations. Writing Madison of 
Adams’s faults, he emphasized his virtues and lovable qualities. 
When the bitter battles of their administrations were in the past 
and a mutual friend wrote that the old man at Quincy had said, 
‘I always loved Jefferson and always shall,’ he said, ‘That is 
enough for me,’ and set to work to revive the old friendship. ‘Thus 
the time came when in reply to Jefferson’s congratulations on the 
election of John Quincy Adams in 1824, Adams wrote: ‘I call him 
our John because when you were at the Cul de Sac at Paris, he 
appeared to me to be almost as much your boy as mine.”! This 
capacity for keeping his judgment clear of the benumbing fumes of 
prejudice concerning the qualities of his enemies was one of the 
strong points of his leadership. 

This does not mean that in practical politics Jefferson was a 
‘Miss Nancy’ or a ‘Sister Sue.’ This first consummate practical 
politician of the Republic did not consider it practical to under- 
estimate the foe, nor to dissipate his energy and cloud his judg- 
ment by mere prejudices and hates. He was not an idealist in his 
methods, and this has given his enemies a peg on which to hang 
the charge that he was dishonest. He was an opportunist, to be 
sure; he never refused the half loaf he could get because of the 
whole loaf he could not have. He trimmed his sails at times to 
save his craft — and this was wisdom. He compromised at the call 
of necessity. He was hard-headed and looked clear-eyed at the 
realities about him. He was cunning, for without cunning he 

1 Adams, Works, x, 414. 


| 


THOMAS JEFFERSON: A PORTRAIT 111 


could not have overcome a foe so powerfully entrenched. He was 
as elusive as a shadow, and this has been called cowardice — but 
it was difficult to trap him in consequence. His antipathy to the 
frontal attack has often been referred to with contempt, but, lead- 
ing a large but unorganized army against one of tremendous power, 
he preferred the methods of Washington in the field — which was 
to avoid the frontal attack with his ragged Continentals against 
the trained and disciplined army. Because of these conditions he 
was given to mining. When apparently quiescent, he was probably 
sowing discord among his foes — his part concealed. This was 
hateful to the Federalists — just as the tactics of Frederick were 
hateful to the exasperated superior forces against him. 

Jefferson was the most resourceful politician of his time. For 
every problem he had a solution. He teemed with ideas. These 
were his shock troops. If he seemed motionless, it was because by 
a nod or look he had put his forces on the march. Like the wiser of 
the modern bosses, he knew the virtue of silence. When in doubt, 
he said nothing. When certain of his course, he said nothing — to 
his foes. It was impossible to smoke him out when he preferred to 
stay in. In the midst of abuse he was serene. And he was a stick- 
ler for party regularity.1 He appreciated the possibilities of organi- 
zation and discipline. When money was needed for party pur- 
poses, his friends would receive a note: ‘I have put you down for so 
much.’ When the party paper languished, he circulated subscrip- 
tion lists among his neighbors, and instructed his friends to imitate 
his example. He was never too big for the small essential things, 
and he was a master of detail — very rarely true of men of large 
views. His energy was dynamic and he was tireless. He never 
rested on his arms or went into winter quarters. His fight was end- 
less. The real secret of his triumph, however, is found in the 
reason given by one of his biographers: ‘He enjoyed a political 
vision penetrating deeper down into the inevitable movement of 
popular government, and farther forward into the future of free 
institutions than was possessed by any other man in public life in 
his day.’ | | > 

1 Works, 11, 358; to Duane, 


112 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Vill 


No American of his time had such versatility or such diversified 
interests. He was asked to frame the Declaration of Independence 
because of his reputation as a writer. Adams has told the story: 
*He brought with him a reputation for literary science and a happy 
talent for composition. Writings of his were handed about ! re- 
markable for their peculiar felicity of expression.’ It was the ‘Sum- 
mary View’ which elicited the admiration of Edmund Burke. A 
more ambitious effort, his ‘Notes on Virginia’ were written during 
the fatal illness of his wife, and while he was confined to the house 
two or three weeks by a riding accident.? It was a valuable con- 
tribution to the natural, social, economic, and political history of 
the State, with a number of eloquent passages and fascinating 
pages. 

He had an artistic temperament, loved music, and at the begin- 
ning of his career we find him busy planning his garden at Monti- 
cello, and practicing three hours a day on his loved violin, under 
the instructions of an Italian musician. His hospitality to the 
Hessian prisoners is partly explained by a mutual love of music. 
Returning from an absence to find ‘Shadwell,’ his early home, in 
ashes, he inquired anxiously about his books. ‘Oh, my young 
master,’ exclaimed the distressed slave, ‘they were all burnt, but 
we saved your fiddle.’ 3 

Loving art in all its forms, he was fond of the company of ar- 
tists. It was he who arranged in Paris for Houdon to go to America 
to make the statue of Washington.‘ He entertained Trumbull in 
the French capital, accompanying him to Versailles to see the 
King’s art collection, and urged him to remain in Paris and study.5 
He was delighted with architectural beauty and lingered about the 
masterpieces. From Nesmes, he wrote enthusiastically to a woman 
friend: ‘Here I am, Madame, gazing whole hours at the Maison 
Quarree, like a lover at his mistress. This is the second time I have 
been in love since I left Paris. The first was with a Diana at the 
Chateau de Laye-Epinaye in Beaujolais, a delicious morsel of 
sculpture, by M. A. Soldtz. This you will say was in rule, to fall in 


1.4 Summary View, and A Reply to Lord North. 2 Domestic Life, 58. 3 Ibid., 43. 
4 Works, v, 33; 42; 59. 5 Tbid., 400-01. 


THOMAS JEFFERSON: A PORTRAIT 113 


love with a female beauty; but with a house. No, Madame, it is 
not without a precedent in my own history. While in Paris I was 
violently smitten with the Hotel de Salm.’?! When the Capitol at 
Richmond was in contemplation, he urged the construction of the 
most beautiful edifice possible as a model to be emulated in other 
buildings; drew some plans himself; examined those of Hallet, 
was captivated with those of Thornton, and urged their accep- 
tance. ‘Simple, noble, beautiful,” he wrote home.? 

And yet, so many-sided was this man, that he was a utilitarian 
and scientist as well as artist. In Europe he was thought a philos- 
opher, and Humboldt came to America to pass many hours under 
his roof. A perusal of his letters discloses the intensity and range of 
his interests. He was entranced with clocks, and we find him writ- 
ing David Rittenhouse reminding him of ‘a kind promise of mak- 
ing me an accurate clock,’ ? and later to Madison of a watch he had 
made for himself and inquiring if his friend wished one.4 He sum- 
moned a Swiss clock-maker to Monticello who died on the moun- 
tain and is buried in the enclosure with his patron. He put the 
noted Buffon to rout in Paris on points in natural history. Ad- 
miring the red men, he spent years collecting their vocabularies.® 
When in Paris he heard that an Arabic translation of Livy had 
been found in Sicily, and importuned the chargés des affaires of 
Naples to make inquiries, and was much excited to hear that such 
a translation had been found ‘and will restore to us seventeen of 
the lost books.’’ In the midst of the political diversions and social 
distractions of Paris he found time to write at length on the ‘latest 
discoveries in astrology.’® As early as the summer of 1785, when 
Pilatre de Roziére made his fatal attempt to cross the English 
Channel in a balloon, we find him eagerly discussing the possibili- 
ties of the aeronautical science.? A newly invented lamp pleased 
him and he sent one to a friend from Paris.’° The use of steam in 
the operation of grist mills interested him and he found time to 
witness the test." Even the absorbing drama of the French 
Revolution in its early stages did not lessen his interest in Paine’s 
iron bridge, and he attended its exhibition,” and finding the in- 


1 Works, v1, 106; Domestic Life, 109. 2 Works, rx, 17-19. 8 Ibid., tv, 42. 
4 Ibid., v, 180. 5 Ibid., 244-45; v1, 20-23, 8 Iiid., vu, 267-70. 
7 Ibid., 73-79. 8 Tind., v, 244-45. 9 Tbid., 22-24. 


10 Thid., 294-95, MN Tbhid., 294-95; v1, 11-15. 2 Tbid., vu, 113-16. 


114 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


ventor hesitating between ‘the catenary and portions of a circle,’ 
he sent to Italy for a scientific work by the Abbe Mascheroni.! 
Fascinated by inventions, he was, himself, the inventor of a 
plough. 


rx 


Interested as he was in art and inventions, his heart was with 
the country life and the farmer’s lot. He was never happier than 


_ when, in the early morning, mounted on one of his beloved horses, 


he rode over his broad acres at Monticello, observing with a per- 
ennial zest the budding of the trees in spring, the unfolding of the 
flowers, the ripening of the harvest. Wherever he was, throughout 
his life, he longed for the house he had made on the hill, the broad 
fields, the family circle and the servitors and slaves. There he was 
lord of the domain. If he employed Italian gardeners, they con- 
formed to his ideas. If he had a supervisor, it was he himself who 
determined what should be planted and where — where the or- 
chards should be, what trees should be set and their location; and 
even the vines and shrubs, the nuts and seeds, the roots and bulbs 
claimed his personal attention. Even his hogs were named, and 
when one was to be killed, he designated it by name.? There, too, 
he lived in an atmosphere of affection. There he had taken his 
bride, a woman of exquisite beauty, grace, and loveliness; there his 
children had been born, and there, all too soon, their mother died. 
He was passionately devoted to her and there was no successor. To 
the daughters who were left he became both a father and a mother, 
resulting in an intimacy seldom found between father and daugh- 
ters. In Paris he would not permit even his trusted servant to do 
their shopping, reserving that duty for himself. Always patient, 
never harsh, and ever sympathetic, he was the ideal parent.3 
Though he did not remarry, he was fond of the society of women 
and they of his. The few letters to women that have been pre- 
served are masterpieces of their kind, sprightly, playful, sometimes 
beautiful. His relations with the women of the Adams family are 
shown in a note to John Adams’s married daughter, written from 
Paris: “Mr. Jefferson has the honor to present his compliments to 
Mrs. Smith and to send her the two pair of corsets she desired. 
1 Works, vu, 241-44, 2 Watson, 114. § Randall, 1, 481. 


THOMAS JEFFERSON: A PORTRAIT 115 


He wishes they may be suitable, as Mrs. Smith omitted to send her 
measure. Times are altered since Mademoiselle de Samson had 
the honor of knowing her; should they be too small, however, she 
will be so good as to lay them by a while. There are ebbs as well as 
flows in this world. When the Mountain refused to go to Ma- 
homet, he went to the Mountain.’! In Paris he formed a few cher- 
ished friendships with women, notably with Mrs. Cosway, Italian 
wife of an English painter, a woman of charm, beauty, and intel- 
lect, with whom he corresponded. One of his letters, the dialogue 
between the Head and the Heart on her departure for England, is 
unique and sparkling.? He appreciated the exquisite Mrs. Bing- 
ham whom he met in Paris, and his chiding letters to her after 
her return to America must have pleased that artificial lady im- 
mensely.3 He was a friend of the Comtesse De Tesse whose mind 
he admired, 4‘ and of Madame De Corney whose beauty attracted 
him. ‘The Bois de Boulogne invited you earnestly to retire to its 
umbrage from the heats of the sad season,’ he wrote her gallantly. 
‘I was through it to-day as I am every day. Every tree charged 
me with this invitation.’® 

Such was Thomas Jefferson who took upon himself the organi- 
zation of the forces of democracy, when its enemies were in the 
saddle, booted and spurred, and with a well-disciplined and power- 
ful army at their back. None but an extraordinary character 
could have dared hope for victory, and he was that, and more. 
Democrat and aristocrat, and sometimes autocrat; philosopher 
and politician; sentimentalist and utilitarian; artist, naturalist, 
and scientist; thinker, dreamer, and doer; inventor and scholar; 
writer and statesman, he enthralled his followers and fascinated 
while infuriating his foes. 


1 Domestic Life, 78. 2 Ibid., 87-89. 
8 Works, v1, 81-84. 4 Jbid., 102-06, 8 Jbid., 145-46, 


CHAPTER VI 
THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND 


I 


F New York wanted any revenge for the removal,’ wrote Mrs. 
Adams to her daughter soon after reaching Philadelphia, ‘the 
citizens might be glutted if they could come here, where every 
article has been almost doubled in price, and where it is not pos- 
sible for Congress and the appendages to be half as well accommo- 
dated for a long time.’! Reconciliation for the removal was not 
complete several months later when Oliver Wolcott wrote his 
father complaining that ‘the manners of the people are more 
reserved than in New York.’? Even so he had ‘seen nothing to 
tempt [him] to idolatry,’ after having seen ‘many of their principal 
men, and he had no apprehensions of ‘self-humiliating sensations’ 
after a closer acquaintance.’* It was not with unrestrained en- 
thusiasm that the officials took up their residence in the greater 
city, with its population of more than 60,000. ‘The Philadel- 
phians,’ according to the indignant comment of Jeremiah Smith, 
‘are from the highest to the lowest, from the parson in his black 
gown to the fille de joie or girl of pleasure, a set of beggars. You 
cannot turn around without paying a dollar.’ 4 
To the visitor entering by coach on Front Street and rumbling 
up to the City Tavern the prospect did not seem so black as to 
those who received their first impressions from the water-front. 
These beheld ‘nothing... but confused heaps of wooden store 
houses, crowded upon each other’? — and, behind the wharves, 
Water Street, narrow, shut in by the old bank of the river, dirty, 
filthy, stinking. Could he have looked down upon the city from 
some convenient hill, he would have found something to revive his 
drooping spirits in the compactness of the town and the substan- 
tial character of the houses. The principal streets of the period 
were Front, Second, Third, and Fourth, and beyond Sixth there 


1 Mrs. Adams’s Letters, u, 207. 4 Republican Court, 1, 56. *Ibid.,1, 64, 4 Ibid., 253. 
® Weld, 1, 5-6, 


THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND 117 


were scarcely any habitations. No one thought of building on 
Arch or Chestnut Streets west of Tenth, where the land was 
thickly dotted with frogponds.! Practically all of business and 
fashion was to be found east of Fourth Street, and the visitor or 
official sojourner could congratulate himself on the ease with 
which he could get about from place to place. An English tourist, 
observing that with the exception of Broad and High Streets the 
thoroughfares were not more than fifty feet in width, found them 
suggestive of ‘many of the smaller streets of London except that 
the foot pavement on either side is of brick instead of stone.’ ? 

If the filth of the odorous water-front, the narrowness of the 
streets, and the frogponds on the outskirts, so audible in the 
night, were depressing, the houses, attractive, and in many in- 
stances architecturally pretentious, hinted of comfort and solidity 
if not of opulence. The fact that almost all were constructed of 
brick was not lost upon the travelers.’ In the more congested dis- 
tricts these houses had a shop on the first floor. 

The streets, with their red-brick foot pavements and rows of 
trees, making them fragrant after summer rains, and drearily 
murmurous in the winter winds, were paved with pebbles in the 
middle,‘ with a gutter made of brick or wood, and lined with 
strong posts to protect the area of the pedestrians.’ The trees, 
mostly buttonwood, willow, and Lombardy poplars, had been 
brought over from Europe some years before by William Hamil- 
ton. At frequent intervals town pumps offered refreshment to 
the thirsty, or, in the night, an accommodating hanging-post for 
the inebriate staggering home from one of the popular taverns.’ 
Not without its charm was a walk through the streets of Philadel- 
phia in the days when Hamilton and Jefferson were exchanging 
shots, with the poplars and willows to shut off the sun, the pumps 
to minister to the comfort, and with most of the houses offering 
to the view a garden filled with old-fashioned flowers — lilacs, 
roses, pinks, and tulips, morning-glories and snowballs with gourd 
vines climbing over the porches. In the case of the more imposing 
mansions there were more elaborate gardens with rare flowers and 


1’ Republican Court, 256; Annals of Philadelphia, 1, 225. 2 Twining, 44, 
3 Wansey, 184; Liancourt, rv, 91; Weld, 1, 8; Twining, 45, 
4 Liancourt, Iv, 91; Weld, 1, 7-8. 5 Warville, 187. 
6 Scharf, u, 875. 7 Warville, 187. 


118 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


shrubbery, but in many of these wealth claimed its privilege and 
shut off the view from the common folk who could only catch the 
fragrance.! 


The visitor on public business bent found all the governmental | 


centers close together. If interested in the debates at Congress 
Hall, erected for the purpose at Sixth and Chestnut Streets next to 
the State House, the smallest child could direct him. If a person 
of no special importance, he could find his way into the commo- 
dious gallery of the House, and, looking down upon the chamber, a 
hundred by sixty feet, with its three semi-circular rows of seats 
facing the Speaker’s rostrum — ‘a kind of pulpit near the center’ ? 
— could find Ames busy at his circular writing-desk, Madison on 
his feet or Sedgwick in conference with a lobbyist. If fortunate he 
might be admitted to the space on the floor beneath the gallery. 
But it was not so easy to penetrate to the more sacred precincts of 
the Senate on the floor above where the self-constituted guardians 


of the covenant and the rights of property held themselves aloof | 


from the gaze of the vulgar. Perhaps, if he really prized the privi- 
lege, he might look down from some point of vantage on the State 
House Garden where the statesmen were wont to take the air and 
compose their thoughts. 

Did he have business with Jefferson? It was only a little way to 
the three-story brick residence at High and Eighth Streets which 
had been taken over for the purposes of the State Department. 
With Hamilton? It was but a few steps to the old Pemberton 
mansion near Chestnut and Third, with its well-cultivated garden 
in the rear where the indefatigable human dynamo worked far 
into the night.? With the President? It was but a short distance 
from Jefferson’s office to the Morris house. 

At the time Washington moved in, the Morris house was one of 
the most distinguished in the city, a dignified and impressive 
brick mansion, with two large lamps in front, and with ample gar- 
dens to proclaim it the abode of a personage of consequence. It 
was under its roof that Washington had lived as the guest of Mor- 
ris while presiding over the Constitutional Convention. It was not 
without difficulties and annoyances that the house was taken over. 
The banker was lustily praised by his friends for his sacrifice in 

1 Scharf, 1, 875, 2 Wansey, II. § Lippincott, 36-37. 


( 
| 


THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND 119 


abandoning his home, but it appears to have been a sacrifice simi- 
lar to that of managing the finances of the Revolution. One writer 
questioned whether ‘giving up a house of moderate dimensions 
for 700 pounds a year can be deemed a great sacrifice... when... 
the President was accommodated in this city [New York] with a 
much more elegant house at 400 pounds per annum.’! Even Wash- 
ington, who was Morris’s intimate friend, was distressed at the 
difficulty in persuading him to fix the rental, and wrote Lear that 
he could not understand the Senator. He would be willing to pay 
as much as he paid in New York, and even more if there was not 
clear extortion. The owner finally fixed the rental at three thou- 
sand dollars a year.2 Thus Washington moved in, and there the 
Presidents lived until the capital was moved to Washington. 

There, if properly presented, the visitor might call to receive the 
rather cold, stately bow of Washington or even drink a cup of tea 
with Mrs. Washington. In the case of a levee, he was sure to be 
welcome. But if his social status did not suffice to justify the cross- 
ing of the threshold, he might, if he were patient, see the great man 
as he drove forth in his ornately decorated coach; or, better still, 
see him emerge on foot with his secretaries, Lear and Jackson, one 
on either side, with cocked hats on their heads, the aides a little 
in the rear. If he had the temerity to follow at a respectable 
distance, he would have been surprised, perhaps, to find that 
the President did not converse with his secretaries while on his 
walks.’ 


II 

It was not joy unconfined to be interned in any of the hotels or 
taverns of Philadelphia at any time while it was the capital. Inthe 
journals of tourists who sojourned there we encounter no enthu- 
siastic encomiums, even for O’Eller’s, which owes something of its 
glamour in perspective to the fact that the Assembly dances were 
held in its ballroom. It was infinitely better, at any rate, than the 
Sign of the Sorrel Horse on Second Street, which comes down to 
us as a ‘bad one.’ 4 The City Tavern, scene of numerous political 
demonstrations, concededly one of the best, would have been bet 


1 New York letter to Afaryland Journal, November 19, 1790. . 
® Republican Court, 341. 8 Jbid., 366, _€ Davis, Travels, 40-41, 


120 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


ter rid of vermin that infested the beds.! The London Tavern, 
which had its days as the ‘principal hotel,’ was ‘deficient in com- 
fort’ even at its best,? and the Indian Queen distinguished itself as 
the scene of a doleful robbery when some of Ames’s colleagues lost 
their linen, and thirty thousand dollars in securities, and he es- 
caped only because his name on his trunk assured the ‘partial 
rogues’ that ‘nothing was to be got by taking it away.’ In 1794, 
the Golden Lion or the Yellow Cat at Eighth and Filbert Streets 
was a favorite because of its well-drawn beer and porter; and the 
visitor, pushing through the smoke-laden air to drink malt liquor 
from a pewter mug, would, likely as not, find Governor Mifflin or 
General Knox of the Cabinet enjoying their mugs along with the 
mechanics and clerks.‘ But it was not necessary to sleep in the beds 
of the Yellow Cat to quaff its liquors, and after a brief experience 
with the taverns the tourist would be likely to follow the example 
of Thomas Twining and seek more comfortable and sanitary quar- 
ters in some of the numerous rooming-houses that catered particu- 
larly to members of Congress. The choicest of these resented the 
idea that they were other than the private houses of gentlemen 
accommodating political personages — this particularly true in 
the case of Francis, the Frenchman, at whose house on Fourth 
Street, Vice-President Adams had a room.’ In these private room- 
ing and boarding-houses, in which the majority of the celebrities 
lived, an abundant table, clean agreeable rooms, and the con- 
genial companionship of colleagues made an appeal. At Francis’s 
the head of the table was reserved for Adams, and all the ceremo- 
nial forms were scrupulously observed, although he frequently had 
his meals served in his rooms. It was not until he had escaped from 
the Indian Queen and found lodgings ‘at the house of Mrs. Sage’ 
that Ames began ‘to feel settled and at home.’ ® T his hiving had its 
comedies, sometimes its scandals, and occasionally its romances, 
as on the day Senator Aaron Burr took James Madison to call 
upon the winsome daughter of his landlady, and history was made 
in the candlelit parlor of the boarding-house. 

Quiet and home-like, at least, these boarding-houses of our early 
statesmen, and if they had no bars, they were in close proximity to 


1 Wansey, 111. 2 Twining, 31. 3 Ames, 1, 88-89, 
4 Scharf, m1, 985, § Twining, 31-34, 6 Ames, 1, 88-89, 


THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND 121 


many that were of good repute. The members of the Legislature 
sometimes were known to discuss important measures at Geisse’s 
Tavern over the mugs,! were wont, on adjournment, to linger at 
Mr. O’Eller’s for his incomparable punch,? and to celebrate the 
ending of a session with an evening of conviviality at ‘Mr. Burns 
tavern on Tenth Street.’ * Gentlemen riding along the banks of 
the Schuylkill could seldom resist the impulse to dismount at the 
tavern of Metz — for these drinking-houses were kindly placed 
among a people intolerant of puritanism.*‘ 

Going forth into the streets to mingle with the common people 
was a revelation to the polished tourist from the old lands. Here 
they found nothing of the humility of the lowly to which they were 
accustomed. The mechanics and common laborers took the theory 
of equality seriously. One traveler found ‘the lower sort of people’ 
lacking in good manners ® and observed that a well-dressed stran- 
ger, asking a polite question, was almost certain of an impudent 
answer. These were the men who were to man the societies 
fashioned after those of the Parisian radicals, to rally passionately 
to the support of the French Revolution, and to supply Jefferson 
with his shock troops — and sometimes shocking troops — in his 
fight for the democratization of the Republic. 

These, too, in their desperate striving for equality were moved 
to imitations of the spendthrift practices of the rich. Even the 
servants and the negroes gave elaborate balls which Liancourt 
found ‘destitute of the charming simplicity of the fétes of our 
peasants.’ ? The women appeared in dresses beyond their means; 
the laborer and his lady rode in coaches to the dance, where an 
elaborate supper was served, with liquid refreshments. Sundays 
found the public-houses of the environs packed with the men of 
the factories and shop, borne thither, with their families, in chairs. 
There was much drinking and spending with gambling on the 
fights arranged for their delectation.2 At Harrowgate Gardens, 
two miles out on the New York road, and Gray’s Gardens on the 
Schuylkill, they flocked to drink tea or liquor, to dance, prome- 
nade, or flirt, and on summer nights the young men of all stations 


1 Hiltzheimer’s Diary, 167, 2 Tbid., 201. $ Ibid., 205, # Ibid., 205. 
5 Weld, 1, 29. ® Jind., 1, 80, 
? Liancourt, rv, 108-09, 8 Ibid, 


122 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


were lured to them by the promise of romance. Even the grave and 
reverend statesmen could not, in all cases, resist the call. Gay and 
wicked some must have thought the scene — with the painted 
women of the town a bit brazen in their fishing for men. ‘We have 
Eves in plenty, of all nations, tongues and colors,’ wrote Oliver 
Wolcott to his wife from Gray’s Gardens where he had taken re- 
fuge from the yellow fever, ‘but do not be jealous — I have not 
seen one yet whom I have thought pretty’ — leaving her to imag- 
ine the possibilities should one such appear. And yet, pleasure- 
loving as the population was, the nights were reasonably quiet. 
About the time the city assumed the dignity of a capital, there was 
little to disturb the tranquillity of the night after ten o’clock be- 
yond the voice of the watchman, or the footsteps of some night- 
hawk wending his way by the light of the street-lamps ‘placed 
like those in London.’? But five years later, a visitor who recalled 
that in 1794 it was unusual to meet any one at night, or to hear any 
noises after eleven o’clock, found that the nocturnal annoyances 
continued far later into the night. 

It was by day, however, that the city made its best impression. 
The luxury-loving people, the wealth and extravagance of the 
social leaders insisting upon London and Parisian styles, the 
commercial traditions of the community gave to its shopping dis- 
trict an elegance found nowhere else in America. The houses of 
the importers and wholesalers, some maintaining their own ships, 
were found, for the most part, on Front and Water Streets. When 
in the spring and autumn the ships came in, and the great boxes 
of English dry-goods were stretched along the pavement of Front 
between Arch and Walnut Streets to be opened, it was a thrilling 
event to the Philadelphians. Fluttering about them were the retail 
merchants — for most of these in the days of the city’s political 
preéminence were women — exclaiming ecstatically over the con- 
tents. Soon the goods were transferred to the shops, which even a 
Frenchman found ‘remarkable for their neatness’ 4— due, no 
doubt, to the sex of the proprietors. What more fascinating than 
to stand before the great show windows — something new — at 
Mrs. Whiteside’s fancy dress-goods shop, with exquisite cloths and 


1 Gibbs, 1, 561. 2 Warville, 187. 


* Liancourt, rv, 99, 4 Warville, 188, 


THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND 123 


dresses hung full length and festooned to best advantage after the 
manner of Bond Street, London. Did it add anything to the ap- 
peal to know that the proprietress had come from London? Alas, 
no doubt. Thither the ladies from the mansions drove in their 
carriages to make their purchases, and thence, perhaps, for some- 
thing more, to the South Second Street store of the smiling Mrs. 
Holland, and then on, perchance, to Mrs. Jane Taylor’s at the 
Sign of the Golden Lamb.! And then, having ministered to the 
materialistic yearnings of vanity, as like as not milady directs the 
coachman to stop at Bell’s British Book Shop on Third Street, 
near Pearl, lest the lord and master, in placing his order with his 
London agent, overlooked something she would not miss. 

An easy, patrician life for some of these Philadelphians, but not 
for all. The workman receiving a dollar a day and board, and with 
the smallest houses on the outskirts renting for three hundred 
dollars a year, found it far from a frolic to make both ends meet. 
The middle-class employees of the stores and industries, paying 
from eight to twelve dollars a week for board, without wine, can- 
dles, or fire, could have found little to interest them in Mrs. White- 
side’s show windows, for, while the clerks were courteous and the 
merchant polite, the cost of her goods was far in excess of that on 
Bond Street.? But it is not with these of the more humble order 
that we are concerned just now. It is quite possible that the cu- 
rious Jefferson, who hada habit of prying into the living conditions 
of ‘people of no importance,’ may have wondered how these lived, 
but the social environment of the majority of the statesmen was 
far removed from the common people. It is with the world of 
fashion that we are concerned. 


IIT 


No society in America could have been less in harmony with the 
spirit of democracy, for nowhere was class consciousness and caste 
pride more pronounced. “Those who constitute the fashionable 
world are at best a mere oligarchy, composed of a few natives and 
as many foreigners,’ wrote Otis to his wife.3 ‘I might have believed’ 
myself in an English town,’ said Viscount de Chateaubriand. An 


1 Wharton, Salons, 7L 2 Liancourt, rv, 101 
3 Otis, 1, 128. 4 Scharf, uo, 907. 


124 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Englishman noted that ‘amongst the upper circles... pride, 
haughtiness, and ostentation are conspicuous; and it seems that 
nothing could make them happier than that an order of nobility 
should be established, by which they might be exalted above their 
fellow citizens, as much as they are in their own conceit.’! A French 
nobleman could not escape the observation that ‘the English 
influence prevails in the first circles and prevails with great intol- 
erance.? And Otis, who liked the tone himself, was much impressed 
with the discovery that ‘the women after presentations to the court 
of George IIT or Louis XVI transplanted into Philadelphia society 
the manners of the English aristocracy and the fashions of Paris.’ ® 
During the days of the British occupation, the cream of society 
had reveled with the British officers, and many of these had re- 
sumed their places in the society of the republican capital without 
abandoning their former views. This English tone was to be felt by | 
Jefferson a little later when his sympathy with the French Revolu- 
tion was to enter into his policies. From the beginning these pro- 
English aristocrats were to draw political lines in social inter- 
course, and in time Otis was to record that ‘Democratic gentlemen 
and their families, no matter how high their social qualifications, 
were rigidly ostracised by the best society.’4 Along with this went 
a rather vulgar deification of the dollar, and, strangely enough, a 
lack of polite hospitality to the stranger. ‘What is justly called 
society,’ wrote Liancourt whose ideas had been fashioned at Ver- 
sailles, “does not exist in this city. The vanity of wealth is common 
enough.’ The picture he paints is not a pretty one. It shows a 
flamboyant rich man flauntingly displaying ‘his splendid furni- 
ture, his fine English glass, and exquisite china,’ to the stranger 
invited to come to ‘one ceremonious dinner,’ and then dismissing 
him for another who had not ‘seen the magnificence of the house, 
nor tasted the old Madeira.’ This, we are told, was the routine for 
all who came from Europe— ‘philosophers, priests, literati, princes, 
dentists, wits and idiots.’ But alas, ‘the next day the lionized 
stranger is not known in the street except he be wealthy.’> How- 
ever much they may have fallen short in manners, they yielded 
nothing to Versailles in dress. This ‘elegance of dress’ astonished 


1 Weld, 1, 21. * Liancourt, rv, 105. ® Otis, 1, 126, 
‘Morison, Otis, 1, 126. 5 Liancourt, Iv, 104-05, 


THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND 125 


Chateaubriand, and Liancourt was amazed at ‘the profusion and 
luxury’ in ‘the dresses of their wives and daughters.’ At balls, 
‘the variety and richness of the dresses did not suffer in compari- 
son with Europe.’ The brilliant note was assiduously sought in 
costumes, and there was much copying of the subjects of Gains- 
borough and Sir Joshua Reynolds. One foreigner noting the 
‘immense expense on their toilet and head dress’ thought it ‘too 
affected to be pleasing.’! But by common consent these grand 
dames and belles were beautiful, with their sparkling eyes, grace- 
ful forms, and the brilliancy of their complexions. 

If this aristocracy was neglectful of the stranger who had no 
golden key to its interest, it was not because of a dearth of enter- 
taining. Here there was a hectic activity — dinners, dances, 
breakfasts, teas, parties enough to satisfy the most insatiate pas- 
sion for such excitement. Throughout the season the great houses 
were ablaze with light, and if, as Mrs. Adams complained, there 
was much the same company in all, it was congenial company, 
and the intimacy of the contact allowed a familiarity that some- 
times verged on the risqué. In less than a month after her arrival, 
Mrs. Adams was appalled at ‘the invitations to tea and cards in 
the European style,’ ? and was complaining that she ‘should spend 
a very dissipated winter if [she] were to accept one half the invita- 
tions, particularly to the touts or teas and cards with even Satur- 
day night... not excepted.’ A little later Aaron Burr was be- 
ing swamped with ‘many attentions and civilities— many invita-~ 
tions to dine, etc.’* If Burr declined, as he wrote his wife, the 
handsome young Otis, who loved the company of women, was not 
so coy. ‘I have dined once with Cuttling at Mrs. Grattan’s,’ he 
wrote home, ‘once at Yznardi’s [Spaniard who spent much time in 
Philadelphia] in great stile; and yesterday in the country with 
Jonathan Williams [nephew of Franklin]. I am engaged for next 
Christmas with Mrs. Powell, but with nobody for the Christmas 
after next.’ ® 

At these functions — heavy drinking — flirting — risqué talk. 
Even a German was shocked to find that at public dinners each 


1 Warville, 190. 2 Mrs, Adams’s Letters (to Mrs. Smith), m, 211. # Jbid., nu, 213-14, 
4 Davis, Burr, 1, 303. 
5 Morison, (iis, 1, 128-29. 


126. JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


person would often consume six bottles of Madeira.! Only Burr 
was hard to satisfy. ‘I despair of getting genuine Trent wine in 
this city,’ he wrote Theodosia. ‘There never was a bottle of real 
unadulterated Trent imported here for sale. Mr. Jefferson, who 
had some for his own use, has left town.’? But if there was no 
Trent, Madeira flowed in streams, beer and ale, punch and whiskey 
and champagne could be had for the asking, and there was asking 
enough, even at parties and dinners. Even Hamilton, who drank 
with moderation, sometimes became ‘liquorish’ at the table, and 
on one occasion made rather free with another man’s wife to the 
husband’s indignation until mollified with the assurance of his 
spouse that she ‘did not like him at all.’ Even so, thought the 
irate husband, Hamilton ‘appears very trifling in his conversation 
with ladies.’* And ‘trifling’ indeed must have been much of the 
talk. 

Thus it was at a dinner at Clymer’s, a leading member of the 
‘House. Present, Otis, the Binghams, the Willings — the top 
cream of the aristocracy. Aha, cried the vivacious sister of Mrs. 
Bingham, referring to the host’s newly acquired stomacher, and 
mentioning the touching case of the Duke of York, recently 
married to the Duchess of Wiirttemberg who was compelled to cut 
a semi-circle out of his table to give access to his plate. Mrs. 
Bingham coyly expressed sympathy for the Duchess. (Bursts of 
laughter and applause.) But Clymer, not to be outdone, turned to 
his married sister with the comment that he would ‘soon be able to 
retort this excellent jest on her.’ (Renewed laughter and more ap- 
plause.) It was an hilarious occasion, the applause ‘would have 
done credit to a national convention’ and ‘Miss Abby and Miss 
Ann did not disguise their delight nor their bosoms.’4 On now toa 
dinner at Harrison’s, who married a sister of Mrs. Bingham, where 
one of the guests, ‘after rallying Sophia... upon her unfruitful- 
ness,’ led to a ‘natural but not very flattering transition’ which 
‘introduced Mrs. Champlin and her want of prolific qualities as a 
seasoning for the Canvas Backs.’*> But let us hurry on to a third 
dinner, with Hamilton, his vivacious sisters-in-law, Mrs. Church 
and Miss Schuyler. A lively company! Mrs. Church, ‘the mirror 


1Scharf, 1, 910 (from Bulow). ? Davis, Burr, 1, 376. 
§ Morison, Oéis, 1, 141-43. 4 Tbid., 1, 135. 5 Tbid., 1, 135. 


THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND 127 


of affectation,’ who is ‘more amusing than offensive’ because so 
affable and free from ceremony; and, still more lively, Miss 
Schuyler ‘a young wild flirt from Albany, full of glee and appar- 
ently desirous of matrimony.’ Mrs. Church drops her shoe bow, 
Miss Schuyler picks it up and fastens it in Hamilton’s button-hole 
with the remark, ‘I have made you a knight.’ ‘But what order?’ 
asks Mrs. Church, ‘he can’t be a knight of the garter in this coun- 
try.’ ‘True, sister, but he would be if you would let him.’ 

Wine, women and song — such the spirit in some of the great 
houses in moments of abandon. But it would be unfair to leave the 
impression these incidents would convey. There were brilliant 
men of vast achievement, and women of extraordinary charm and 
cleverness moving behind these curtained windows. Let us meet 
them in the mansion of Mrs. Bingham — the uncrowned queen of 
the Federalist group — the woman without a peer. 


IV 


None of the three capitals of the country have produced another 
social leader of the cleverness, audacity, and regality of Mrs. 
William Bingham. During the eight years of the domination of 
the Federalists, of whom her husband was one of the leaders, there 
was no public character of the first order who did not come under 
the influence of her fascination. By birth, environment, nature, 
and training she was fitted to play a conspicuous part in the social 
life of any capital in the world. The daughter of Willing, the part- 
ner of Robert Morris, she was the favored of fortune. Some years 
before her birth, her father, inspired by sentimental motives, . 
built the mansion on Third Street in which she was born, and pat- 
terned it after the ancestral home in Bristol, England. There, sur- 
rounded by all the advantages of wealth, her beauty unfolded 
through a happy childhood. The pomp and pride of great posses- 
sions did not imbue her with a passion for republics or democracy. 
She was destined to play a part in a rather flamboyant aristocracy, 
and was as carefully perfected in the arts and graces of her sex as 
any princess destined to a throne. In the midst of the Revolution, 
in her sixteenth year, she married William Bingham who combined 
the advantages of wealth, social position, and a capacity for politi- 
cal leadership. 


im. 


x /f 


128 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


She was only twenty, when, accompanied by her husband, she 
went abroad to captivate court circles with her vivacity, charm, 
and beauty. At Versailles, the gallants, accustomed to the ways 
and wiles of the most accomplished women of fashion, were en- 
tranced. At The Hague, where she lingered awhile, the members 
of the diplomatic corps fluttered about the teasing charmer like 
moths about the flame. In the court circles of England she suf- 
fered nothing in comparison with the best it could offer, and the 
generous Abigail Adams, thrilling to the triumph of the young 
American, found her brilliancy enough to dim the ineffectual fires 
of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Five years of familiarity 
with the leaders in the world of European fashion and politics 
prepared her to preside with stunning success over the most 
famous political drawing-room of the American capital. 

It was after their return from Europe that Mrs. Bingham 
moved into the imposing mansion on Third Street built on the 
ample grounds of her childhood home. All the arts of the archi- 
tect, landscape gardener, and interior decorator had been drawn 
upon to make a fit setting for the mistress. The garden, with its 
flowers and rare shrubbery, its lemon, orange, and citron trees, its 
aloes and exotics, was shut off from the view of the curious, only 
mighty oaks and the Lombardy poplars visible above the wall — ‘a 
magnificent house and gardens in the best English style.’! The 
furnishings were in keeping with the promise of the exterior. ‘The 
chairs in the drawing-room were from Seddon’s in London of the 
newest taste, the back in the form of a lyre, with festoons, of yel- 
low and crimson silk,’ according to the description of an English 
tourist. ‘The curtains of the room afestoon of the same. The car- 
pet, one of Moore’s most expensive patterns. The room papered 
in the French taste, after the style of the Vatican in Rome.’? The 
halls, hung with pictures selected with fine discrimination in Italy, 
gave a promise not disappointed in the elegance of the drawing- 
rooms, the library, the ballroom, card-rooms, and observatory .? 
To some this extravagant display of luxury was depressing, and 
Brissot de Warville, who was to return to Paris to die on the guil- 
lotine as a leader of the ill-fated party of the Gironde, held the mis- 


1 Wansey, 138, 2 Ibid., 136. 
® Wansey; Twining; Lippincott; Republican Court; Scharf, n, 911. 





MRS. WILLIAM BINGHAM 





eto, MTU URANO 
“aecare Me OTH Ree scar cee 
UNIVERSITY OF WCINGIS 









THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND 129 


tress of the mansion responsible for the aristocratic spirit of the 
town. It was a pity, he thought, that a man so sensible and ami- 
able as Bingham should have permitted a vain wife to lead him to 
‘a pomp which ought forever have been a stranger to Philadelphia.’ 
And all this display ‘to draw around him the gaudy prigs and para- 
sites of Europe,’ and lead ‘to the reproach of his fellow citizens 
and the ridicule of strangers.’! But if the French republican was 
shocked, even so robust a democrat as Maclay was so little of- 
fended that he was able to write after dining at the mansion that 
‘there is a propriety, a neatness, a cleanliness that adds to the 
splendor of his costly furniture and elegant apartments.’ ? 

And ‘the dazzling Mrs. Bingham,’ as the conservative Abigail 
described her,* what of her? The elegance and beauty which has 
come down to us on canvas prepares us for the glowing descrip- 
tions of contemporaries. Hers was the type of patrician beauty 
that shimmered. She was above the medium height and well- 
formed, and in her carriage there was sprightliness, dignity, ele- 
gance, and distinction. Sparkling with wit, bubbling with vivac- 
ity, she had the knack of convincing the most hopeless yokel in- 
troduced into her drawing-room by the exigencies of politics that 
she found his personality peculiarly appealing. Daring at the 
card-table, graceful in the dance, witty in conversation even 
though sometimes too adept with the naughty devices of a Con- 
greve dialogue, inordinately fond of all the dissipations pre- 
scribed by fashion, tactful in the selection and placing of her guests 
at table, she richly earned the scepter she waved so authoritatively 
over society.4. What though she did sometimes stain her pretty 
lips with wicked oaths, she swore as daintily as the Duchess of 
Devonshire, and if she did seem to relish anecdotes a bit too spicy 
for a puritanic atmosphere, she craved not the privilege of breath- 
ing such air.® 

Hers the consuming ambition to be the great lady and to intro- 
duce into American society the ideas and ideals of Paris and Lon- 
don. Did Jefferson gently chide her for her admiration of French 
women? Well — was she not justified? Did they not ‘possess the 
happy art of making us pleased with ourselves?’ In their conver- 


1 Warville, 190. 2 Maclay, 366. 3 Mrs. Adams’s Letters, u, 211, 
« Republican Court, 291-302. 5 Morison, Otis, 1, 135. 


130 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


sation could they not ‘please both the fop and the philosopher?’ 
And despite their seeming frivolity, did not these ‘women of 
France interfere with the politics of the country, and often give a 
decided turn to the fate of empires?’ In this letter to the man she 
admired and liked, while loathing his politics, we have the nearest 
insight into the soul of the woman.! 

But these graver ambitions were not revealed to many who ob- 
served her mode of life, her constant round of dissipations, her 
putting aside the responsibilities of a mother, leaving her daugh- 
ters to their French governesses until the tragic elopement of 
Marie with a dissipated nobleman, and the apprehension of the 
pair after their marriage at the home of a milliner in the early morn- 
ing. Hers were not the prim notions of the average American of 
her time. It was Otis, not she, who was shocked to find Marie so 
thinly dressed in mid-winter that he was ‘regaled at the sight of 
her whole legs for five minutes together,’ and wondered ‘to what 
height the fashion would be carried.’? Swearing, relating risqué 
stories, indulging in dissipations night after night, shaming her 
motherhood by her affected indifference or neglect, the fact remains 
_that the breath of scandal never touched her until the final scene 
when in her early thirties they bore her on a stretcher from the 
home of her triumphs in the vain hope of prolonging her life in 
the soft air of the Bermudas. 

And so to her dinners, dances, parties, the clever men of the 
Federalist Party flocked, with only a sprinkling of Jeffersonians, 
for, though Jefferson himself could always count on a gracious 
reception from the hostess, he was not comfortable among the 
other guests. Always the best was to be had there — and the 
newest. Did she not introduce the foreign custom of having serv- 
ants announce the arriving guests, to the discomfiture of Monroe? 

‘Senator Monroe,’ called the flunky. 

‘Coming,’ cried the Senator. 

‘Senator Monroe’ — echoed a flunky down the hall. 

‘Coming as soon as I can get my greatcoat off,’ promised the 
Senator. 

But we may be sure that no expression of amusement on the 
face of the beaming Mrs. Bingham added to his sa a SRE 

1 Domestic Life, 98-100, 2 Morison, Otis, 1, 137. 


THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND 131 


‘A very pretty dinner, Madame,’ said the intolerable Judge 
Chase, after looking over the proffered repast, ‘but there is not a 
thing on your table that I can eat.’ 

An expression of surprise or resentment on the hostess’s face? 
Not at all. What would the Judge relish? Roast beef? Very well 
— and a servant received his orders and soon hurried back with 
beef and potatoes to be gluttonously devoured and washed down 
with a couple of bottles of stout ale instead of French wines. 

‘There, Madame,’ said the Judge, made comfortable, ‘I have 
made a sensible and excellent dinner, but no thanks to your French 
cook.’ 

And he never knew from the lady’s pleased expression that she 
thought him an insufferable bore. | 

Such the woman whose home was to be to the Hamiltonians 
what Madame Roland’s was to the Girondists, and Lady Holland’s 
to the English Whigs. Now let us peep into the drawing-room and 
observe the men and women who bowed to her social scepter. 


v 


In deference to Mrs. Bingham we shall permit the servant to 
announce these visitors as they arrive. 

‘Mr. and Mrs. Robert Morris.’ 

No doubt about their importance, for he was as intimate with 
Washington as she with Mrs. Washington, and such was her in- 
timacy that she was frequently referred to as ‘the second lady in 
the land.’ It was she who accompanied Mrs. Washington from 
Philadelphia to New York after the inauguration, and during the 
spring and autumn the two might frequently be seen under the 
trees at ‘The Hills,’ the Morris farm near the city, enjoying the 
view of the river and such pastoral pictures as were offered by the 
imported sheep and cattle grazing on the rolling hills. Of Mrs. 
Morris it was said that ‘so impressive is her air and demeanor 
that those who saw her once seldom forgot her.’! She had dignity, 
tact, and elegance, and, like Mrs. Washington, no respect for ‘the 
filthy democrats.’ She was a thorough aristocrat. Her husband, 
banker, merchant, Senator, was of imposing height, his merry 
blue eyes, clear complexion, and strong features denoting some- 

1 Republican Court, 309. 


132 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


thing of his significance; and he had the social graces that capti- 
vate and hold. His wealth alone would have made him a com- 
manding figure in the society of the time and place. Some genera- 
tions were to settle on his grave before he was to appear as the 
martyr who had sacrificed a fortune to liberty, for there was a 
different understanding in his day. A natural aristocrat, ultra- 
conservative because of his business connections and great pos- 
sessions, if he was tolerant of the experiment in republicanism, 
he took no pains to conceal his contempt of democracy — in 
Senate or drawing-room. 

‘Mrs. Walter Stewart.’ 

Another of the intimate circle of the Washingtons who dwelt 
in a fine house next door to the Morrises, she was one of the 
most brilliant and fascinating women with whom Mrs. Bingham 
liked to surround herself. A long way she had traveled from her 
girlhood home as the daughter of Blair McClenachan, the ardent 
democrat who was to help burn Jay’s Treaty, welcome Genét, and 
to follow Jefferson, for she was the wife of the rich General Stewart, 
and had been seduced by the glitter of the aristocracy. Like Mrs. 
Bingham, she had had her fling with the nobility in London, Paris, 
Berlin, and Rome, and had returned to open her house for some of 
the most elaborate entertaining of her time. In striking beauty, 
conversational charm, and a caressing manner, she rivaled Mrs. 
Bingham at her best. About her dinner table the leaders of the 
Federalist Party were frequently found.? 

‘Mrs. Samuel Powell.’ 

An interesting lady, ‘who looks turned fifty,’* enters to be 
greeted by the hostess as ‘Aunt.’ A courteous, kindly woman, 
almost motherly in her manner, she talks with the fluency and 
ease to be expected of the mistress of the famous house on ‘So- 
ciety Hill.’* No one of Mrs. Bingham’s guests who has not prome- 
naded on summer evenings in the Powell gardens, the walks lined 
with statuary.® 

‘General and Mrs. Knox.’ 

An impressive figure, the Secretary of War, his height carrying 


1QOberholtzer’s Life (Major Armstrong’s letter to General Armstrong), 70; Governor 
Reed to General Green, 70. 

2 Republican Court, 314. * Mrs, Adams’s Letters, u, 211, 4 Ibid, 

5 Karly Philadelphia, 38, Kee 


THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND 133 


the two hundred and eighty pounds not ungracefully, his regular 
Grecian nose, florid complexion, bright, penetrating eyes giving an 
attractive cast to his countenance. They who know him best 
suspect that he enjoys too well the pleasures of the table, but love 
him for a kindliness that temper cannot sour, a sincerity and gen- 
erosity that know no bounds, a gayety that his dignity cannot — 
suppress — a fine sentimental figure with a Revolutionary back- 
ground. What though he had been a bookseller before he eloped 
with a lady of quality, he was too keenly appreciative of the ad- 
vantages of aristocracy to have much patience with the queer 
notions of Tom Jefferson, whom he liked. He rubbed his shins 
when Hamilton stumbled over a chair. 

And Mrs. Knox — she must have been a dashing belle in her 
romantic youth, for despite her enormous weight, she was still 
handsome with her black eyes and blooming cheeks.! Passing her 
girlhood in the Loyalist atmosphere of an aristocratic home, she 
had never become reconciled to the impertinence of the people, 
and even during the war her adoring Henry had been moved to 
warn her against sneering openly at the manners and speech of 
the people of Connecticut. ‘The want of refinement which you 
seem to speak of is, or will be, the salvation of America,’ he wrote.? 
But hers was the more masterful nature and his democracy was to 
capitulate to her aristocracy in the end.? But — whither goes the 
lady from the drawing-room so quickly? Ah—of course, it is to the 
card-room, for was it not the gossip that ‘the follies of a gambling 
wife are passed on to the debits of her husband?’* In the morning, 
no doubt, she will run in on Mrs. Washington at the Morris house, 
for they are very close. 

‘Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Hamilton.’ 

What a romantic picture he makes in the finery that sets him off 
so well — brilliant eyes sparkling, eloquent lips smiling, a courtly 
figure bending over the hostess’s hand. Only a moment for the 
lightest kind of banter with the ladies, and he is off to the Pember- 
ton mansion to work far into the night. Mrs. Hamilton will linger 
a little longer, an appealing type of woman, her delicate face set off 
by ‘fine eyes which are very dark’ and ‘hold the life and energy of 


1 Drake, Knoz, m. 2 Brookes, Knoz, 60. 8 [bid., 264, 
4 Steiner, McHenry (Williamson to McHenry), 196-97 


134 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON | 


, the restrained countenance.”’! Hamilton had found her in the 


Schuyler homestead at Albany, ‘a brunette with the most good- 
natured, dark lovely eyes,’? gentle, retiring, but in the home circle 
full of gayety and courage. Weeks and months sometimes found 
her missing from the social circle, for with her, in those days, life 
was just one baby after another. 

‘Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Wolcott, and Miss Wolcott.’ 

A pleasing personality was that of the handsome protégé of 
Hamilton, breathing the spirit of jollity, given to badinage, cap- 
able, too, of serious conversation on books and plays. He loses 
himself in the lively throng, but his infectious laughter is as re- 
vealing of his presence as the bell of Bossy in the woods. But we 
are more interested in his companions. Mrs. Wolcott was all 
loveliness and sweetness, grace and dignity, and such was the ap- 
peal of her conversation that one statesman thought her ‘a divine 
woman’; another, ‘the magnificent Mrs. Wolcott’; and the brusque 
Senator Tracy of her State, on being assured by a condescending 
diplomat that she would shine at any court, snorted that she even 
shone at Litchfield. Even so the eyes of the younger men are 
upon Mary Ann Wolcott, sister of the Federalist leader, a pearl of 
her sex, combining an extraordinary physical beauty with opulent 
charms, and a conversational brilliance unsurpassed by any woman 
of the social circle. Very soon she would marry the clever, cynical 
Chauncey Goodrich and take her place in official society in her 
own right. The Wolcotts, we may be sure, read Paine’s ‘Rights of 
Man’ with amazement and disgust. 

‘Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Sedgwick.’ 

A magnificent type of physical manhood, the face of one accus- 
tomed to command and sneer down opposition; a woman of ele- 
gance and refinement, typical of the best New England could offer 
in a matron. 

‘Pierce Butler.’ | 

A handsome widower this man, maintaining an elegant estab- 
lishment in Philadelphia, who affected to be a democrat, and care- 
fully selected his associates from among the aristocracy, a South 
Carolinian with a certain reverence for wealth. 


1 Wharton, Salons, 54. ' 9 Intimate Life, 98. 
* Gibbs, 1, 161; Queens of American Society, 35. 


THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND 135 


‘Mrs. William Jackson.’ 

An equally charming but less beautiful sister of the hostess, now 
wife of one of Washington’s secretaries, a favorite at the Morris 
mansion, and with no time for thinking on the grievances of the 
yokels and mechanics — an American prototype of the merry 
ladies of Versailles before the storm broke. 

Among the foreign faces we miss the tall figure of Talleyrand 
whose Philadelphia immoralities shocked the French Minister, and 
whose affairs with a lady of color! excluded him from the Bingham 
drawing-room. But there is Viscount de Noailles who had pro- 
posed the abolition of feudal rights in the early days of the French 
Revolution; and Count Tilley, the dissipated roué planning an 
elopement with his hostess’s daughter with the connivance of her 
French governess; and Brissot de Warville, enlightened political 
idealist of France soon to fall beneath the knife of Robespierre. 
There, too, the Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt who was 
redolent of courts, and the Baring brothers of London, bankers, 
soon to marry the Bingham girls. 

A veritable Vanity Fair, many clever, some brilliant, most skep- 
tical of republics, idolatrous of money and distinctions, and few 
capable of discriminating between anarchy and democracy. Such 
was the social atmosphere of the capital when the fight to deter- 
mine whether this should be a democratic or aristocratic republic 
was made. 


VI 


We have an English-drawn picture of an evening at the British 
Legation with many American guests gathered about the blazing 
fire. The Consul is ‘descanting on various subjects, public and 
private, as well as public and private characters, sometimes with 
unbecoming levity, sometimes with sarcasm even more unbecom- 
ing.’ An English guest was afraid that such talk ‘could hardly fail 
to be offensive to... many of the guests and to the good taste of 
all.’ But could this English gentleman have listened in on the con- 
versations at Mrs. Bingham’s, Mrs. Morris’s, or Mrs. Stewart’s, 
he might have concluded that these reflections on certain public 
characters were altogether pleasing to the principal figures in the 

1 Probably Madame Grand; Intimate Life, 


136 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


society of the capital.! And could he have returned a little later to 
find society chuckling over the display in the windows of a news- 
paper office of the pictures of George ITI, Lord North, and General 
Howe, he might have decided that there was a pronouncedly pro- 
English party in America. Had he driven about the environs, 
among the hills, and along the banks of the rivers, he would have 
seen country houses of the aristocracy — Lansdowne, the seat of 
the Binghams; Bush Hill, where the Adamses lived at first; Wood- 
ford, and other country places to suggest similar seats in his own 
land. And had he been meandering in the neighborhood of Horse- 
head’s or Chew’s Landing, seven or nine miles out, he might have 
been startled at the familiar English picture of gentlemen in bright 
coats, the pack in full ery after the fox.? And having made these 
observations he could have found some extenuation in the conver- 
sation in the British Minister’s house. 

The snobbery of class consciousness entered into even the Dan- 
cing Assembly which held forth at frequent intervals at O’Eller’s, 
in a ballroom sixty feet square, with a handsome music gallery at 
one end, and the walls papered after the French style.* The sup- 
pers at these dances were mostly liquid,‘ and, since it is on record 
that on hot summer days ladies and gentlemen could count ona 
cool iced punch with pineapple juice to heighten the color, it may 
be assumed that the Assembly suppers were a success.> The fact 
that the young ladies sometimes took two pair of slippers, lest they 
dance one out, hints of all-night revels. And the expulsion from 
membership of a young woman who had dared marry a jeweler 
tells its own tale.’ At the theater, which was usually crowded,* the 
aristocrats and democrats met without mingling, for the different 
prices put every one in his or her place, and if wine and porter were 
sold between acts to the people in the pit ‘precisely as if they were 
in a tavern,’® the aristocracy paid eight dollars for a box,’® and an 
attaché, in full dress of black, hair powdered and adjusted in the 
formal fashion, and bearing silver candlesticks and wax candles, 
would meet Washington at the entrance and conduct him with 
much gravity to the presidential box, festooned with red drapery, 


1 Twining, 39. £ Lippincott, 212. .  ®Wansey, 1382. 
* Agnes Repplier, 185, bd Wansey, 181. 6 Wharton, Salons, 157, 
? Lippincott, 282, ® Liancourt, rv, 109, 


® Weld, 1, 24. 40 Hiltzheimer, 204. 


THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND 137 


and bearing the United States coat of arms.! ‘The managers have 
been very polite to me and my family,’ wrote Mrs. Adams. ‘The 
actors came and informed us that a box is prepared for us. The 
Vice-President thanked them for their civility, and told them he 
would attend whenever the President did.’2 On these occasions, 
when the highest dignitaries of the State attended, a stranger, 
dropped from the clouds, would have scarcely thought himself in 
a republic. At the theater he would have found a military guard, 
with an armed soldier at each stage door, with four or five others 
in the gallery, and these assisted by the high constables of the city 
and police officers.? There-was no danger threatening but the 
occasion offered the opportunity for pompous display so tempting 
to the society of the city. 

At first the statesmen had to content themselves with the old 
Southwark Theater, which was dreary enough architecturally, 
lighted with oil lamps without glasses, and with frequent pillars 
obstructing the view.‘ But the best plays were presented, by good 
if not brilliant players, and the aristocracy flirted and frolicked 
indifferent to the resentful glances of the poorer classes in less 
favored seats. It reached the climax of its career just as the new 
theater was about to open with the then celebrated tragic actress, 
Mrs. Melmoth — and soon afterward, the new Chestnut Street 
Theater opened its doors and raised its curtain. The opening was 
an event — the public entranced. Two or three rows of boxes, a 
gallery with Corinthian columns highly gilded and with a crimson 
ribbon from capital to base. Above the boxes, crimson drapery — 
panels of rose color — seats for two thousand. “As large as Co- 
vent Garden,’ wrote Wansey, ‘and to judge by the dress and ap- 
pearance of the company around me, and the actors and scenery, I 
should have thought I had still been in England.’* And such a 
company! There was Fennell, noted in Paris for his extravagance, 
socially ambitious, and handsome, too, with his six feet of stature, 
and ever-ready blush, about whom flocked the literary youth of 
the town. Ladies — the finest trembled to his howls of tragedy 
and simpered to his comedy. There, too, was Harwood, who had 
married the granddaughter of Ben Franklin — a perfect gentle- 


1 Lippincott, 118, 2 Mrs. Adams’s Letters (to Mrs. Smith), nm, 213. 
* Scharf, m1, 967, * Lippincott, 119. 5 Wansey, 126-27, 


138 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


man; and Mrs. Oldmixon, the spouse of Sir John, the “beau of 
Bath,’ who divided honors in his day with Nash and Brummel; 
and Mrs. Whitlock, whom her admirers insisted did not shine 
merely by the reflected glory of her sister, Mrs. Siddons. 

Quite as appealing to both aristocrat and democrat was the 
Circus at Twelfth and Market Streets, established in 1792 by 
John Ricketts whose credentials to society were in his erstwhile 
connection with the Blackfriars Bridge Circus of London. Wash- 
ington and Martha occasionally witnessed the performances, quite 
soberly we may be sure, and the ‘court party’ thus got its cue if 
any were needed. The proprietor riding two horses at full gallop, 
Signor Spinacuta dancing daringly on a tight rope, a clown tickling 
the risibilities of the crowd and mingling Mrs. Bingham’s laughter 
with that of Mrs. Jones, her washwoman, women on horseback 
doing stunts, and a trained horse that could leap over other horses 
without balking — such were the merry nights under the dripping 
candles.} | 

Then there was Bowen’s Wax Works and museum of curiosities 
and paintings and the museum of Mr. Peale — and under the 
same roof with the latter the reading-room of the Philosophical 
Society, where Jefferson was to find a sanctuary in the days when 
he was to be anathema in the fashionable drawing-rooms. 

Frivolity, extravagance, exaggerated imitation of Old-World 
dissipations, could scarcely have been suited to Jefferson’s taste; 
but when he wished for society of another sort he could always run 
in on Rittenhouse to discuss science, or on Dr. Rush who mixed 
politics with powders, or, better still, he could drive out to ‘Sten- 
ton,’ the beautiful country house of Dr. James Logan and his 
cultured wife, approached by its glorious avenue of hemlocks. 
There he could sit under the trees on the lawn or walk in the old- 
fashioned gardens or browse in the fine library. There before the 
huge fireplace in the lofty wainscoted rooms he could sit with the 
Doctor and discuss the aristocratic tendencies of the times — and 
this he frequently did. Despite his democracy, Jefferson lived like 
an aristocrat. He had found a place in the country near the city 
where the house was ‘entirely embosomed in high plane trees with 
good grass below,’ and there, on warm summer days, he was wont 

1 Scharf, 1, 952. 


THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND 139 


to ‘breakfast, dine, write, read, and entertain company’ under 
the trees. Even in its luxury, his was the home of the philosopher. 
It was under these plane trees that he worked out much of the 
strategy of his political battles.1 Such was the social background 
for the struggle of Hamilton and Jefferson — with little in it to 
strengthen or encourage the latter in his fight. . i 

1 Domestic Life (to Martha), 221-22, - 


CHAPTER VII 
JEFFERSON MOBILIZES 


I 


HEN Jefferson assumed the task of organizing the opposi- 

tion to the policies of the Federalists all the forces most 
susceptible to organization and intelligent direction were arrayed 
upon the other side. The commercial interests, constituting 
Hamilton’s shock troops, had their organizations in all the larger 
towns and in a crisis could be speedily mobilized in the smaller. . 
The various Chambers of Commerce were Federalist clubs that 
could be summoned to action on a day’s notice. The financial 
interests, always in close formation when not sleeping on their 
arms, could be ordered to the front overnight. The live-wire 
speculators whose fortunes had sprung up magically were on their 
toes to do battle for the system that had enriched them, and eager 
to do the bidding of the magician who had waved the wand. The 
greater part of the intellectuals, lawyers, doctors, professors, 
preachers, were enthusiastic champions of Hamiltonian policies — 
and because of their prestige these were powerful factors in the 
moulding of opinion. And, most serious of all, from Jefferson’s 
point of view, the major portion of the press was either militantly 
Hamiltonian or indifferently democratic. In the drawing-rooms 
were heard the sentiments of the Chambers of Commerce — in 
glorification of materialism. 

The rich, the powerful, and their retainers among the men of the 
professions, were bound to the Federalist by a common interest in 
property and a common fear of the masses. Since the policies of 
Hamilton were frankly in the interests of the commercial classes, 
their supporters were found largely in cities and towns of the 
commercial North — within easy reach. A word from the chief to 
his leaders in the capital — Ames and Cabot of Massachusetts; 
King, Schuyler, and Lawrence of New York; Wolcott and Ells- 
worth of Connecticut; Morris, Bingham, and Fitzsimmons of 
Pennsylvania; Dayton of, New Jersey; McHenry of Maryland; 








FISHER AMES ROBERT GOODLOE HARPER 








GEORGE CABOT GOUVERNEUR MORRIS 


THE LIBRARY 
OF THE 
UNIVERSITY GF ILEMNORE: 





JEFFERSON MOBILIZES 141 


Smith and Harper of South Carolina — a word from these to the 
commercial leaders in their States, and from these a word to those 
under obligations to them — the small merchants operating on 
credit — and the coffee-houses buzzed, the Chambers of Commerce 
acted, editors plied their pens, preachers thundered from pulpits, 
and even at the social functions they danced and flirted in the war 
paint of the party. 

As Jefferson surveyed the field, he observed that his great an- 
tagonist’s organization was but a consolidation of organizations 
previously existent — and these imposing in their representation 
of wealth, intellect, and social prestige. Hamilton could snap his 
fingers, and the merchants came; could lift his hand, and the offi- 
cers of the Cincinnati were in the saddle; could wave his wand, 
and Fenno, Russell, and other potent editors would instantly do 
his bidding, and the preachers of New England scarcely waited for 
the sign to pass the devil by to damn democracy. 

But Jefferson had his eye on other forces, numerically stronger, 
if less imposing. The farmers, comprising ninety per cent of the 
Nation, were resentful of policies that pampered the merchant and 
left them out in the cold. The private soldiers of the Revolution, 
less respected then than when Webster made his Bunker Hill 
address, were embittered because their securities had gone for a 
song while speculators had waxed wealthy on the sacrifice. The 
more robust republicans were shocked at the aristocratic affecta- 
tions of their rulers and the tone of the Federalist press. The ex- 
cise law was hated in the remote sections, and unpopular with the 
masses everywhere. ‘The doctrine of implied powers had alarmed 
the friends of State sovereignty. There was an undercurrent of 
feeling, which Jefferson, with ear marvelously keen for rumblings, 
caught, that laws were passed for the few at the expense of the 
many. And it was being bruited abroad that in high quarters there 
was a disposition to cultivate England to the neglect of France. 
Everywhere through the South and West there was a bitter resent- 
ment of government by and for the East. 

Including all, and more important than any single one, there 
was a fervent spirit of democracy running through the land, while 
the Federalist leaders were openly denouncing the democrats. 
‘Looking simply at the field of American history,’ says Professor 


142) JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Anson D. Morse, ‘it would be just to enumerate among the causes 
of the Democratic Party all influences which from the beginning of 
the colonial period carried forward at a really marvelous rate the 
democratization of the American character.’! The country was 
really democratic before there was a party of democracy. Jeffer- 
son knew it; Hamilton never suspected it, or, suspecting, deter- 
mined to override the sentiment. Therein lies the original cause of 
the ultimate triumph of Jefferson, and the evidence that the Fed- 
eralist Party was foredoomed to ultimate failure. 

But how to reach, galvanize, vitalize, organize this great widely 
scattered mass of unimportant, inarticulate individuals — that 
was the problem that confronted Jefferson. Ninety-five per cent of 
the people lived in the country or in villages. Communication was 
difficult. There were for them no Chambers of Commerce, no 
coffee-houses, no Faneuil Halls. Thousands had no idea what was 
going on outside the boundaries of their isolated farms and villages. 
If the masses in the cities were in sympathy with democracy — and 
they were — comparatively few of these were permitted to vote. 
Under the John Jay Constitution of New York, as late as 1790, only 
1303 of the 13,330 male residents of voting age in New York City 
were allowed to vote with the property qualification deliberately 
designed for their disfranchisement.? In Vermont alone, of the 
New England States, no property qualification attached to the 
suffrage, albeit in New Hampshire any male paying tax, however 
small, was qualified. In Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connect- 
icut great numbers were excluded by their poverty. Thus, in the 
beginning, the thousands of hewers of wood and drawers of water 
in the towns and cities of the North were lost to all practical pur- 
poses. But all of the common folk were not disfranchised, and 
they who had the vote were splendid material for a militant organi- 
zation. They had a genius for practical politics when under the 
orders of a drill master, and were not too fastidious for the grime 
and sweat of the polling-places. One of these was worth a dozen 
dandies from Mrs. Bingham’s circle on election day. There was 
abundant material for a party — if it could be assembled and co- 
ordinated. i 


1 Parties and Party Leaders, 156-57. # Alexander, 15, 
8 Biddle, Autobiography, 246, 


JEFFERSON MOBILIZES 143 


II 


As Jefferson’s mild eye surveyed the field, he found in almost 
every State local parties, some long in existence, fighting for popu- 
lar rights as they understood them; but their fights had been 
waged on local issues. The party he was to create was to fight in 
precisely the same cause—on the national field.’ Here, then, was 
something already at hand. Why not consolidate these local par- 
ties into one great national organization, and broaden the issue to 
include the problems of both State and Nation? The local leaders? 
Why not make them field marshals in command of the Massachu- 
setts division, the North Carolina division, Pennsylvania and 
Maryland divisions? 

The philosopher-politician took up his pen, for he had learned 
in the organization of the Revolution what could be done through 
correspondence. Out under the plane trees he was to sit at his 
table writing — to Sam Adams, to Rutledge, to John Taylor, to 
Willie Jones. Under his roof and at his table conferences with 
Madison, Monroe, Giles, Bloodworth, became commonplace. ‘Oh, 
I should note that Mr. Jefferson, with more than Parisian polite- 
ness, waited on me at my chamber this morning,’ wrote Maclay. 
“He talked politics, mostly the French difference and the whale 
fishery.’1 A very cautious approach, we may be sure, for the 
master politician and psychologist thoroughly understood the 
little vanities, prejudices, and weaknesses of that singularly sus- 
picious democrat. Quite different would have been a conversation 
with Gallatin or Monroe. Taking an inventory of prospective 
lieutenants in the States, and comparing the material with that 
against him, he could not but have realized his disadvantage. 
Brilliant men are prone to flutter about the rich and powerful, and 
nothing succeeds like success with the strong. No chance for him 
to ride to war surrounded by such scintillating company as that 
which encircled Hamilton — but here and there was a man who 
shimmered in the sun. 

In Massachusetts, home of Ames, Cabot, and Sedgwick, Jeffer- 
son could count on two men who surpassed any of this famous 
group in service in the making of the Republic, but, strange as it 

1 Maclay, 397, 


144 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


may seem in perspective, old Sam Adams and John Hancock were 
not in good standing with the staid business men of Boston. Their 
republicanism was too robust, their devotion to.the principles of 
the Declaration too uncompromising for the materialists, who ap- 
peared, for the most part, on the battle-field after the fight was 
won, to claim the fruits of the victory. Sam Adams had lost his 
race for Congress to Fisher Ames who had dallied with his books 
when the ragged Continentals were struggling in the field. When 
the clever politicians of the Essex Junto exchanged letters, these 
erstwhile Revolutionary heroes of the dark days were seldom 
mentioned with respect; but they had their following in the streets 
and among those who had shared in the perils they had faced. 
Upon these two Jefferson could rely. 

But there were others, more active and militant in the Boston of 
those da¥s in the building of the party of democracy. Foremost in 
the fight, and most annoying to the ruling oligarchy, was the 
brilliant Dr. Charles Jarvis, who was a powerful orator 1 whose 
social status, on a par with that of Otis, raised him above the 
condescension or contempt of the moneyed aristocracy, and whose 
ability was beyond the reach of disparagement.? Through many 
years of leadership in the legislature he ‘had made the rights of 
man his pole star.’? No.one did so much to organize and vitalize 
the masses, for he could pass from the legislative hall to the public 
platform without any diminution of power. As in the former he 
could match the best in argument, on the latter no one knew better 
how to direct the storm.’ Jarvis’s electioneering influence in this 
town is very great,’ wrote John Quincy Adams to his father.’ 

Asa file leader, organizer, agitator, he had powerful support in 
the robust, rough-hewn rope-maker, Ben Austin, who wrestled un- 
der the rules of catch-as-catch-can, mingled with the element that 
Ames and Cabot considered vulgar, and under the signature of 
‘Honestus’ dealt telling blows in letters that the mechanic could 
understand. ‘Rabid essays,’ they were — judged by the standard 
of the élite» Sam Adams, John Hancock, Austin, and Jarvis — 
these were the Jeffersonian leaders in the Old Bay State. Less 


1 Thomas, 1, 21. 2 Morison, Otis, 1, 52. 
8 Quoted from Independent Chronicle, by Robinson, 10. 
4J.Q. Adams, Works, 1, 191. 5 Morison, Otis, 1, 52. 


JEFFERSON MOBILIZES 145 


aggressive, but often valuable, was James Sullivan, orator, leader 
of the Bar, letter-writer and pamphleteer, whose vigorous mind, 
powers of application, and indomitable courage were to render 
yeoman service. 

In the other New England States the democrats were less for- 
tunate. In Connecticut, ruled with an iron hand by an oligarchy 
of preachers, professors, and reactionary politicians, the prospects 
were dark enough, but even there the Jeffersonians found a leader 
capable of coping with the best of the opposition in the hard- 
hitting, resourceful Abraham Bishop, who was a veritable scandal 
and stench to the gentlemen of the cloth and of the counting-room. 
Nowhere in America was such an amazing combination of Church 
and State. Election days were celebrated with religious services, 
and the sermons were party harangues, described by the irrev- 
erent Bishop as consisting of ‘a little of governor, a little of Con- 
gress, much of politics, and a very little of religion — a strange 
compote, like a carrot pie, having'so little ingredients that the 
cook must christen it.” The ruling Council of the State was so 
organized that the system was an impregnable stronghold beyond 
the reach of the people. Nowhere on American soil anything so 
un-American or unrepublican. It did its work behind doors closed 
and barred. The Congregational clergy were the Cossacks of 
Connecticut Federalism, laying the lash of their furious denun- 
ciation on the backs of critics. It required more than a majority to 
rule under this system, and more than ordinary courage to chal- 
lenge its pretensions.” —The good Doctor Dwight of Yale was busy 
damning democrats to perdition. A little later Gideon Granger 
and Ephraim Kirby were to take their place beside Bishop, and 
with the aid of the ‘American Mercury’ of Hartford and the “New 
London Bee’ to give blow for blow. But the fighting was against 
desperate odds, the Federalists strongly entrenched on a steep 
hill, the ascent to which could be raked with canister. 

‘The masses are disfranchised,’ cried Bishop. ‘Yes, poor por- 
poises,’ sneered Noah Webster the Federalist who was soon to be- 
come editor of a New York paper launched by Hamilton.*? But 
Bishop and his little coterie were fighters, and Jefferson took them 
to his heart. 

1 Connecticut in Transition, 190-91. 8 Ibid., 193-97, 8 Ibid., 222. 


146 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


In New Hampshire, Jefferson had to bide his time. Among the 
members of the Senate no one had a better record of unselfish 
Revolutionary service than John Langdon. Practical, hard- 
headed, unimaginative, a lover of money, he had accumulated 
some wealth in mercantile pursuits. Fond of company, pleasing 
and unaffected in his manner, impressive in appearance, his sena- 
torial toga became him well. When Hamilton’s financial plans 
were pending, he gave them his support, and, alas, profited not a 
little, but from the beginning the keen-eyed Jefferson discerned 
the traits that were ultimately to separate him from the Hamilton- 
lans. Within two years Langdon had assumed the leadership of 
the Jeffersonians in New Hampshire, but as late as 1798, according 
to the recollection of a famous Jacksonian, ‘with the exception of 
Langdon and a few sterling patriots there could not be said to 
be in this State a party favorable to the principles of Thomas 
Jefferson.’ ? 

In Vermont the situation was somewhat similar, albeit the 
opportunities there were greater in the absence of a property 
qualification for the vote. There, too, was Matthew Lyon, of whom 
we shall hear much, whose fanatical devotion to democracy was a° 
heritage from a father who had paid the penalty of his patriotism 
on the gallows in Ireland; whose hatred of aristocracy was but a 
reaction to the memory of his days of poverty. Possessing a genius 
for business, and succeeding, he was irresistibly drawn to politics, 
where his Celtic humor, his energy, impetuosity, and sincerity 
surrounded him with friends. His radicalism became a flaming 
torch that lighted up the granite hills. Not for nothing was he 
born in the land of the Donnybrook Fair, for he loved a fight or a 
frolic, and he was to have much of both. Enlisting in the Jeffer- 
sonian fight in the beginning, he was to fight unceasingly, take 
blows, and know the degradation of a cell. There was a degree of 
felony in democracy in the New England of the last days of the 
eighteenth century. 

In Rhode Island, Jefferson sought vainly for an effective leader, 
though the field was fertile because of the lingering hostility to 
centralization and the poverty and debts of the people. 

Leaving New England, the leader found much to interest him 

4 Republican Court, 49. 4 Isaac Hill, quoted by Robinson, 29 


JEFFERSON MOBILIZES 147 


in New York. There was that sturdy, indomitable champion of 
State rights, and inveterate enemy of aristocracy, George Clinton, 
an uncompromising republican of Cromwellian audacity. and de- 
cision, with an unequaled hold on the confidence and affections of 
the people. There, too, were the Livingstons, mortally offended 
by the political stupidity of Hamilton in defeating the brilliant 
Chancellor’s aspirations for the Senate. Had this numerous and 
powerful family a conference one night to discuss the affront and to 
emerge a unit in opposition? 1 Whatever the cause, the effect was 
clear — the Livingston clan was only too eager to join the insur- 
gents, and this was not lost on the astute politician of Monticello. 
Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, convincing orator, erudite 
lawyer, profound statesman, fascinating personality, possessing 
the glamour of wealth and tradition so important to a Jeffersonian 
leader in New York with its commercial princes and barons of the 
soil — here was a man to be cultivated with all the finesse of which 
Jefferson was capable. The master of Monticello could speak the 
language of the master of the New York manor house. 

And Burr? Just what Jefferson expected of Burr is a mystery 
unsolvable. He appreciated his brilliancy and professional pres- 
tige, but were the penetrating eyes blind to the weaknesses of char- 
acter? Just a little while before Burr had joined with Hamilton 
against Clinton, and Federalist votes had sent him to the Senate. 
There, to be sure, he had arrayed himself on the popular side, but 
could he be relied upon? He had played a lone hand, holding aloof 
from the Clintonians and the Livingstons, and dining often at the 
table of Hamilton; but that he was singled out for assiduous culti- 
vation we may be sure. No one was closer to Jefferson than Dr. 
Rush when, in the early fall of 1792, the latter wrote a wheedling 
note to Burr. ‘Your friends everywhere,’ wrote the Doctor, ‘look 
to you to take an active part in removing the monarchical rubbish 
of our government. It is time to speak out or we are undone.’ ? 
Previous to this, Jefferson had been most courteous in permitting 
the charming Senator from New York to examine papers in the 
archives of the State Department until Washington interposed.’ 

Clinton, Livingston, and Burr — a triumvirate that caught Jef- 
ferson’s fancy; but he was interested in opportunities in New York 

1 Hammond, 1, 107. * Davis, Burr, 1, 316-17, 4 Ibid., 1, 831, 


148 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


having no direct connection with any of the three. The less imagi- 
native Maclay had seen in a parade of the Sons of Tammany only 
‘a grotesque scene,’ with the members ‘in Indian dresses,’ and 
while he had addressed them at a dinner he had concluded that 
‘there is some kind of a scheme’ which was “not well digested as 
yet.”! Jefferson made it his business to learn more. He found that 
the strange organization was an answer, in part, to the Cincinnati 
which stood, in the popular mind, for aristocracy; that it was rab- 
idly republican and wholly democratic; that it sympathized with 
the revolutionists in France, and resented the property disqualifi- 
cations of our own Revolutionary soldiers for the suffrage, while 
the wealthy, notoriously friendly to England when these soldiers 
fought, were being accorded political recognition and place. Here 
was a society after his own heart, here a method to make the 
masses felt — a combination and coérdination of their efforts. All 
over the land the hundreds of thousands of inarticulate, unimpor- 
tant, ineffective, commonplace friends of democracy, and in one 
city these had been given a voice, an arm, arostrum. It was not 
‘grotesque’ to Jefferson. He did not join these imitation red men 
in their wigwam, nor drink of their ale, but John Pintard the chief 
became his friend and idolater, and with him the great man talked. 
The non-partisan society grew more and more democratic, soon 
intensely partisan, and at Tammany dinners the welkin rang to 
the toast to ‘Thomas Jefferson.’ New York became a cock-pit 
from the start. 3 

But when the Jeffersonian board of strategy turned to New 
Jersey, the problem was more difficult. No outstanding leader, 
strong in the faith, stood ready to mount and ride. There, true, 
the Janus-faced Jonathan Dayton was ready to flirt with any force 
that might serve his personal ends. He was a speculator — and 
worse. Supporting and profiting from the Hamilton policies, he 
smiled on the Jeffersonians significantly. 

In Pennsylvania there was the nucleus of a party and virile men 
to lead it — men like Mifflin, who, despite his drunkenness, was 
popular and a power; like Maclay, who had the force that intense 
conviction brings in spite of temperamental handicaps; men like 
Alexander J. Dallas, aggressive, daring, able; men utterly unfit for 

1 Maclay, 260. 





ALBERT GALLATIN EDWARD LIVINGSTON 





WILLIAM BRANCH GILES: JAMES MADISON 


THE LIBRARY 
OF THE 
URIVERSITY OF IFPINGIY 


JEFFERSON MOBILIZES 149 


the rough-and-tumble combats of practical politics whose charac- 
ters and abilities made them potent in the fight — like Rush the 
physician, Rittenhouse the scientist, Logan the philosopher, and, 
looming above the tops of the Western forests, a young giant and 
genius, Albert Gallatin. 

In Delaware, nothing; in Maryland, John Francis Mercer, 
fighter and intriguer, sapper and miner, agitator and organizer, 
with whom democracy was a religion, Hamilton a devil, and Jef- 
ferson a saint. In Virginia, a sparkling galaxy, Madison, Monroe, 
the accomplished Pendleton, the resourceful Giles, the extraor- 
dinary John Taylor of Caroline. 

In North Carolina, Jefferson found a leader cut from his own 
pattern, an aristocratic democrat, a radical rich man, a consum- 
mate politician who made the history that lesser men wrote with- 
out mentioning his name, Willie Jones of Halifax. His broad acres, 
his wealth, his high social standing were the objects of his pride, 
and he lived in luxury and wore fine linen while the trusted leader 
of the masses, mingling familiarly with the most uncouth back- 
woodsman, inviting, however, only the select to partake of the 
hospitality of his home. There was more than a touch of the Vir- 
ginia aristocrat of the time in his habits — he raced, gambled, 
hunted like a gentleman. Like Jefferson he was a master of the art 
of insinuation, a political and social reformer. He loved liberty, 
hated intolerance, and prevented the ratification of the Constitu- 
tion in the first State Convention because of the absence of a Bill 
of Rights. There he exerted a subtle influence that was not con- 
spicuous on the floor. If he was neither orator nor debater, he was 
a strategist, disciplinarian, diplomat, who fought with velvet 
gloves —with iron within. A characteristic portrait would show 
him puffing at his pipe in the midst of his farmer followers, suggest- 
ing, insinuating, interspersing his political conversation with dis- 
cussions of the crops, farming implements, hunting dogs, horses. 
An Anthony in arousing the passions by subtle hints, he was an 
Iago in awakening suspicions.! Here was the man with the stuff 
that Jefferson required, generous and lovable in social relations, 
in politics relentless, hard as iron. He was the Jefferson of North 
Carolina — ‘aman... the object of more hatred and more adora- 
_ 1 McRee, Iredell, 1, 232, 239; Dodd, Macon, 38, 


150 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON ; 


tion than has ever since lived’ in that State.! Nor did he stand alone 
without assistants, for there was Nathaniel Macon, honest, intense, 
man of the soil who loved his few acres, his dogs and horses, and 
his class; and there was ‘Timothy Bloodworth whose fierce adher- 
ence to democracy and fanatical hatred of privilege may have 
been a poignant reflection of his poverty. Jones, the aristocratic 
lord of many acres; Macon the representative of the small farmer; 
Bloodworth the artisan, smithy at the forge, watchmaker, wheel- 
wright, as well as preacher, doctor, and cultivator of the soil: his 
radicalism was born in suffering and in suffering he had grown.? 

In Georgia, Jefferson had equal cause for satisfaction. There 
were small farms, poor industrious men, ardent republicans, with 
the frontiersmen’s natural democracy and the debtors’ suspicions 
of concentrated wealth allied with governmental power. And there 
to lead them was James Jackson, idol of the people, a boisterous, 
impassioned orator whose eloquence often gave more heat than 
light. Historians have been prone to sneer at him, but this man 
who came as a child from Devonshire in England to take his place 
three years later in the army of Washington, and to receive the 
keys of Savannah from the British ten years after his arrival, was 
something more than an upstart. He who refused the governor- 
ship of his State when twenty-one, and six years after leaving his 
_ English home, to take his chances in the field, was scarcely an ob- 
ject for jest. He was a power as a leader and was to strike Titan 
blows in the cause that Jefferson nationally led.’ 

In South Carolina, dominated by rich commercial Charleston, 
Jefferson long looked in vain for a leader for his cause. A friend of 
the Pinckneys and the Rutledges, they held aloof or joined their 
fortunes with Hamilton. Only toward the close did Charles Pinck- 
ney, the most eloquent, resourceful, and magnetic of his family, 
part company with his cousins to lunge and lash with gusty joy for 
the man of Monticello. 

Such were the leaders on whom Jefferson was dependent in 
welding the popular parties in the various States into a strong 
national army marching in step, with a common policy and pur- 
pose. 


1 Dodd, Maccon, 51. 2 McRee, Iredell, 11, 233. 
8 Senate Docs., vol. 56, 61st Congress, 2d Session, 755. 


JEFFERSON MOBILIZES 151 


III 


Had Jefferson been even richer than Hamilton in brilliant lead- 
ers, he would not have made the latter’s fatal blunder of assuming 
them to be enough. He was too much the practical politician to be 
impressed with a brilliant staff of officers — without privates. He 
set out to arouse the masses, mobilize, drill, and lead them. Above 
all, it was his intention to lead. Within a year, Ames was to ob- 
serve with desperation and disgust the divisions among the Feder- 
alists and to comment that ‘Virginia moves in a solid column... 
the discipline of the [Jefferson] party is as severe as the Prussian’ 
and ‘deserters are not spared.’} 

The first necessity was to get the men to discipline. A vast 
number of the masses had no conception of their political power 
and were indifferent to the vote. Thousands over the country 
were disfranchised by property qualifications, and one of the prime 
purposes of the new party would be to break these down. The im- 
mediate problem was to awaken the interest of those who, having 
the vote, did not appreciate the privilege. With many of these, 
this was due to the lack of political consciousness; with others, to 
the feeling that it was useless for the unimportant to attempt to 
influence governmental action. To the latter it would be necessary 
to prove the possibilities of the concerted action of large numbers 
of uninfluential men — and there was the Society of Tammany 
pointing the way. No squeamishness in the mobilization either — 
the possession of the vote was enough. Scon, very soon, strange, 
disturbing things would be seen even in New England — cabinet- 
makers, shoemakers, mechanics perking up on politics, with evi- 
dence of organization here and there. Federalist leaders would 
soon be complaining that organization was conspiracy against the 
‘government.’ In New Hampshire they would be calling those 
uniting for political action ‘insurgents.’ The insolence of the Jef- 
fersonians appealing to the people for support would be frowned 
upon as degrading. ‘Of course,’ said a Massachusetts paper, 
‘there can be but two parties in a country — the friends of order 
and its foes.’? 

And such people! The very riff-raff that one would never invite 

1 Ames (to Dwight), 1, 136-37, 2 Robinson, 53, 


152 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


into one’s parlor — ‘desperate, embarrassed, unprincipled, dis- 
orderly, ambitious, disaffected, morose men.’! Were not these the 
propertyless who wasted their earnings in a grogshop?? And who 
were these petty agitators? Who but ‘Jacobins’ holding forth ‘in 
the bar-rooms of Rhode Island and Vermont and trying to stir up 
opposition.’®? Wretched offal after all — but what a pity that Jef- 
ferson should countenance, least of all cultivate, such people. ‘Mr. 
Jefferson appears to have shown rather too much of a disposition 
to cultivate vulgar prejudices,’ wrote Wolcott, and ‘accordingly 
he will become popular in the ale-houses.’4 

Miserable ‘Jacobins!’ Disreputable clowns of the bar-rooms! 
And such unthinkable methods! Here — there — everywhere, 
when a few men could be gathered together, some one appeared to 
deliver free lectures on practical politics. And such subjects! 
‘Discipline’; ‘How to Make Men Follow their File Leaders.’ 5 


IV 


In arousing and consolidating the widely scattered democrats, 
Jefferson instantly appreciated the importance of a national news- 
paper to the end that the farmer in Georgia, the planter in Vir- 
ginia, the frontiersman in western Pennsylvania, the mechanic in 
Boston, the shopmen of Rhode Island, and the reds of Tammany 
sipping their ale in the New York tavern, might all talk the same 
language at the same time. True, the Jeffersonians were not with- 
out able editorial support. There was Thomas Greenleaf pounding 
away vigorously in the ‘New York Journal’; Thomas Adams ham- 
mering merrily in the Boston ‘Independent Chronicle’; and in 
Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin Bache was making a mild show 
of opposition in his ‘Pennsylvania Daily Advertiser.’ But these 
were independent supporters, not ‘organs,’ and it was an ‘organ’ 
that was needed — something to meet the Hamilton organ which 
was becoming increasingly offensive to the democrats. 

In estimating the sincerity of the simulated shock of the Feder- 
alists when the Secretary of State encouraged the establishment of 
a paper to support his principles, it is well to bear in mind that the 


{ Robinson, 55. 
* Quoted from David Daggett’s pamphlet, by Purcell in Connecticut in Transition, 225. 
3 Centinel, August 22, 1792. 4 Gibbs, 1, 73. 


® Robinson, quoting from American Mercury, 9, 


JEFFERSON MOBILIZES 153 


Secretary of the Treasury had done precisely the same thing two 
years before. Then, as always, politicians were shocked at the 
turpitude of their opponents. Just how John Fenno came to es- 
tablish the ‘Gazette of the United States’ is an impenetrable 
mystery. He was in his thirty-eighth year when he appeared at the 
home of Rufus King, perhaps the ablest of Hamilton’s supporters, 
with a letter of introduction from Christopher Gore, a member of 
the inner council of Boston Federatism who afterward waxed 
wealthy on speculation in the funds. The record is meager as to 
Fenno’s previous career beyond the revelation that he was born in 
Boston and taught for several years in the Old South Writing 
School. In the letter to King, we have the assurance of Gore that 
Fenno’s ‘literary accomplishments are very handsome’; that Gore 
had known him long and could testify that ‘his honor and fidelity 
are unquestionable; and, strangely enough, that ‘his talents as 
the editor of a public paper are unrivaled in this commonwealth.’ 

As John Russell was then editing the ‘Columbian Centinel,’ the 
_ tribute would seem strained but for the intimation that the 
strength and sparkle of that able journal was due to Fenno’s con- 
tributions; and since the ‘Centinel’ suffered no apparent loss on 
his leaving Boston, even this theory seems absurd. 

If his origin is a mystery, the purpose of his call on King was 
made clear enough in the letter of introduction. The ‘unrivaled’ 
editor sought encouragement for the establishment of a news- 
paper through arrangements for ‘obtaining the patronage of Con- 
gress’ in the printing of its journals and official papers. Ii some- 
thing of the sort could be arranged, Gore was positive that Fenno 
would prove ‘capable of performing essential service in the cause 
of Federalism and good government.’! | 

The conversation was evidently agreeable, assurances of some 
sort were manifestly given, and within a few weeks the ‘Gazette of 
the United States’ was making its appearance. That Hamilton, 
who was intimately identified with King, was consulted, we may 
be sure; and within four years the relations between Fenno and 
Hamilton were so confidential that the former felt no hesitancy in 
appealing in a letter to the latter for a loan of two thousand dol- 
lars. Months before, the editor had submitted a schedule of his 

1 King, Works, 1, 357, 


' 154 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


debts and credits to the head of the Treasury. The two had talked 
over the financial difficulties of the paper. The appeal for the loan 
was not lightly brushed aside. Hamilton wrote to King of the 
troubles of ‘poor Fenno,’ and proposed that if King would raise a 
thousand dollars in New York, he would himself undertake to raise 
a similar amount in Philadelphia. It is to be assumed that the 
money was raised, for the paper continued to appear. It is signifi- 
cant that in his letter to Hamilton, the editor wrote as one who 
had rendered faithful service and was entitled to consideration.! 

From the beginning Fenno had liked to think of himself as the 
editor of ‘the court journal.’ Possessing considerable merit, it is 
impossible to turn its yellowing pages even now without being 
oppressed with a sense of sycophancy and snobbery. There was a 
fawning on wealth and kow-towing to power in most of the leading 
articles. The tone was pronouncedly pro-English and all Hamil- 
tonian. Democracy was anathema. The critics of the policies of 
the leader of the Federalists were inciters to disorder. All the in- 
fluence of the Federalist leaders was exerted to throw all possible 
governmental patronage into his office. 

Hamilton had his paper before Jefferson got his own.? It was to 
meet these conditions that James Madison and Governor Henry 
Lee conceived the notion of persuading Philip Freneau, ‘the poet 
of the Revolution,’ to establish a newspaper in Philadelphia. 
This fiery petrel of democracy was eking out a mere existence on a 
New York newspaper when Madison, who had been his roommate 
at Princeton, made the proposal. This was due in part to personal 
affection and the feeling that the poet’s sufferings and losses in 
the Revolution entitled him to some consideration, but in large 
measure to the purity of his republicanism and his zeal for the 
popular cause. ‘I entertained hopes,’ wrote Madison later, ‘that a 
free paper, meant for general circulation, and edited by a man of 
genius of republican principles and a friend of the Constitution, 
would be some antidote to the doctrines and discourses circulated 
in favor of Monarchy and Aristocracy.’* With the view to giving 
some slight protection to a precarious enterprise, Madison sought 
a clerkship for his college friend in one of the governmental de- 


1 King, Works, 1, 501-02, 2 Payne, History of Journalism, 155. 
* Writings, 1, 569-70, 


JEFFERSON MOBILIZES 155 


partments. Nor was it to Jefferson that he first applied.! The out- 
come, however, was the offer of a clerkship of foreign languages in 
the State Department at a salary of two hundred and fifty dol- — 
lars a year. He accepted, went to Philadelphia, and established 
the ‘Federal,’ or ‘National Gazette.’ 

The leaders of the new party were plainly pleased with the 
prospect. Jefferson himself did not scruple to solicit subscribers 
among his Virginia neighbors. Henry Lee, who was to desert to the 
enemy later, sent in subscriptions through Madison, in a letter re- 
joicing because the paper ‘is rising fast into reputation,’ and la- 
menting because of the precariousness of its arrival.2 ‘His paper 
in the opinion here,’ wrote Madison acknowledging Lee’s letter, 
‘justifies the expectations of his friends, and merits the diffusive 
circulation they have endeavored to procure it.’ ® 

The Philadelphians awoke with a start to find that an entirely 
new note had been struck in political journalism. Within a few 
weeks, the ‘Federal Gazette’ was being extensively copied in the 
papers over the country. Bache in his ‘Advertiser’ caught some- 
thing of Freneau’s fire and audacity, and began to take a firmer, 
bolder tone. Fenno found himself forced to defend himself and 
his friends in almost every issue. Men and even women scanned 
its columns eagerly and with emotions determined by their po- 
litical prepossessions. Within a few months the poet-editor was 
being hotly debated by the two leading papers of Boston. ‘As all 
the friends of civil liberty wish at all times to be acquainted with 
every question which appears to regard the public weal,’ said the 
“Independent Chronicle,’ ‘a great number of gentlemen in this 
and neighboring towns have subscribed for the Federal Gazette 
published by Mr. Philip Freneau at Philadelphia; and it is hoped 
that Freneau’s Gazette, which is said to be printed under the eye of 
that established patriot, Thomas Jefferson, will be generally taken 
in the New England States.’ * What! wrote a correspondent in the 
‘Centinel,’ is this an avowal that Jefferson is the real editor? A 
paper hostile to religion and government! ‘Surely T. Adams 
ought to be well founded in his affections before he brings forward 
Mr. Jefferson as the patron of such a Gazette.’ ® 


1 Writings, 1, 569-70. 2 Rives, Madison, m1, 194, note. 3 Writings, 1, 543. 
4 September 6, 1792. 5 September 12, 1792. 


156 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Within a short time Freneau had aroused the savage rage of the 
Federalist leaders and the zealous loyalty of the democrats every- 
where. Here was a man who was not awed by power, and, brush- 
ing aside mild criticism and vapory innuendoes, struck hard and 
mentioned names. Soon the Jeffersonian farmers in Georgia were 
talking what he was writing, and Jeffersonian editors generally 
were following his lead. In the bar-rooms of Rhode Island men of 
no consequence were reading the paper aloud over their mugs, and 
David Rittenhouse in the library of the Philosophical Society was 
chuckling over its vicious thrusts. Just then ‘friends of the Con- 
stitution’ among the Federalists began to regret a certain pro- 
vision in the Bill of Rights and to begin the slow incubation of the 
Sedition Law. That incomparable political preacher, Timothy 
Dwight, began to denounce papers as the ‘vice’ of the people in 
the new settlements, and another pious gentleman of the cloth 
thundered from the pulpit: ‘Many of you in spite of all the advice 
and friendly warnings of your religious and political fathers have 
taken and continue to take and read Jacobin papers, full of all man- 
ner of mischief and subtlety of the Devil.’?! The hand-to-hand 
fighting of Hamilton and Jefferson was forced by the lusty blows 
of Freneau, who deserves to be something more than a name in 
the Plutarchian struggle. | 


Vv 


Philip Freneau had richly earned the right to hold and express 
opinions concerning the destiny of his country. Many years be- 
fore the Revolution, his Huguenot ancestors had come over from 
France, and for years his was a well-known name in the best 
circles of New York City where he was born. His childhood had 
been passed on the thousand-acre estate of his father near the 
battle-field of Monmouth, in a fine old mansion fashioned after 
the colonial style, with a great hall running through it, and large 
porticoes commanding a view of a beautiful country. The house 
was served by many domestic slaves. Near by rose Beacon Hill, 
thickly timbered, and from the peak could be seen the lower bay 
and the blue waters of the Atlantic. There his early childhood was 
passed under the tender care and training of a mother of rare in- 

1 Robinson, 70, note. 


JEFFERSON MOBILIZES 157 


telligence. From her he caught a love of poetry, and of the things 
of which poetry is made. The spirit of his liberty-loving ancestors 
was strong within him. He had all the impulsiveness, the fighting 
courage of the Gael. When not at his studies, he wandered alone 
into the woods and upon the hill where he could brood dreamily 
upon the mystery of the sea. On the site where the battle of Mon- 
mouth was to be fought, he began the study of Greek and Latin in 
his tenth year. Even as a child he had a hot passionate hatred of 
oppression, an unfathomable contempt for hypocrisy, and an ar- 
_ dent love of beauty. All this he put into childish verse. 

When he entered Princeton (Nassau Hall), great events were 
beginning to unfold. The patriots of Massachusetts, protesting 
against an English law, had been declared rebels, the leading 
offenders had been ordered across the sea for trial, the troops of 
General Gates had marched into Boston. The college was a hot- 
bed of sedition. That superb patriot, John Witherspoon, was presi- 
dent, and among the students who gathered in the evening in the 
room that Freneau shared with Madison, were ‘Light Horse’ 
Harry Lee, Aaron Burr, William Bradford, destined to close 
an exceptionally promising career as a member of Washington’s 
Cabinet, and Brockholst Livingston. 

Nothing that Freneau ever said or did in after-life that was not 
foreshadowed at Princeton can be found. His tongue was sharp, 
and his pen dripped the vitriol of satire. He wrote much verse, and 
long before the Declaration of Independence, he had a hatred of 
kings. Even thus early in his ‘Pyramid of Kings,’ he made pro- 
fession of his democracy. 

‘Millions of slaves beneath their labors fainted, 
Who were here doomed to toil incessantly, 
And years elapsed while groaning myriads strove 
To raise this mighty tomb — and but to hide 
The worthless bones of an Egyptian king.’ 


Under the encouragement of Witherspoon, all the patriotic fire 
within him burst into flame. 

Long before Washington, Adams, or Franklin were dreaming of 
a republic and absolute independence, this was his dream. During 
the time he was supposed to be poring over Coke and Blackstone, 
he was feverishly plying his pen writing political articles for the 


158 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


press. He was a rebel by nature. He wrote deliberately to arouse 
a burning hatred of tyranny and a militant love of liberty. He 
sang the songs of hate, and read and studied the Roman and French 
satirists to perfect himself in the art he was to use so effectively 
later. When the war began he threw himself into the struggle. A 
pathetic little figure, this — a mere wisp of a boy charging on 
ahead to smash the connection with England, only to find that the 
other patriots had no such thought. They were fighting for rights 
within the empire, not for independence. Even then he was too 
radical for his times or the comfort of his associates. They were 
thinking of rights, and he of liberty — and in sheer disgust he 
sailed away to Jamaica. 

There was the illusion of liberty on the sea and there was beauty 
and poetry, and there was opportunity, too, to prepare himself for 
the part he was to play a little later. It was always his joy to be 
prepared. On that voyage he perfected himself in the science of 
navigation. In the languorous air of Santa Cruz he luxuriated in 
the beauties of nature at its richest, and sought to transcribe to 
paper all he saw and felt. He had an irresistible impulse for crea- 
tion — a poet’s passion for expression.! But even here he was a 
rebel born to protest. Slavery at its worst was all about him — 
and he hit it hard in his descriptions. ‘ 

It was while a guest of the Governor of Bermuda, writing love 
sonnets to the fair daughter of his host, that the news came of the 
Declaration of Independence. This was the sort of rebellion Fren- 
eau could understand, and he hurried home to find that a battle 
had been fought at his very door, and that the cushions of the 
Tennant church he had attended had been stained with bleod. 
Instantly he took out letters of marque and reprisal from the Con- 
tinental Congress, and put to sea to battle with the British ships. 
Plunging patriotically with all his means he had a ship built for 
his own use, named it the Aurora, and sought the enemy. Ina 
battle his ship was struck, and it was as a prisoner on the deck of 
an enemy vessel that he saw his ship, his fortune, sink beneath the 
waves. The rest was torture and a living death. The Scorpion on 
which he was confined was a miserable old hulk converted into a 
prison ship, reeking with foul smells and rank disease, and into 

1‘ The Beauties of Santa Cruz,’ and ‘The House of Night.’ 


JEFFERSON MOBILIZES 159 


this he was packed where the accommodations were not fit for 
swine. One by one he saw his fellows perish from disease and 
neglect, listened in the night to their shrieks of pain and dying 
groans. When verging on death, he was transferred to the Hun- 
ter which some sardonic soul had dubbed a ‘Hospital Prison 
Ship.’ Its horrors have come down to us in his own poems with 
its bitter execration of the Hessian doctor. 


‘Here uncontrolled he exercised his trade, 

And grew experienced by the deaths he made; 
By frequent blows we from his cane endured 
He killed at least as many as he cured.’ 


At length he was exchanged. Leaving the vessel with a raging 
fever, with pains in his joints that made walking a torture, he 
_ turned toward home, going through the woods ‘for fear of terrify- 
ing the neighbors with [his] ghastly looks.’! This was the back- 
ground against which he was to view Washington’s policy of neu- 
trality in the war between France and England. He hated Eng- 
land from that hour to his death. 

Broken in health almost beyond hope of redemption, his ship 
sunk, his money gone, the war still on, he turned to his other 
weapon and took up the pen. ‘The Prison Ship’ helped to fire the 
patriots shivering about the cold camps. The poem of contemp- 
tuous imprecation, in imitation of Horace, on the treason of Ar- 
nold, fanned their wrath. That on the victory of Paul Jones 
heartened the downcast. Poem followed poem, copied throughout 
the country, many published on strips of paper and distributed 
through the army. Some were posted in conspicuous places where 
they could be committed to memory. Paine wrote ‘The Crisis’ 
in prose, Freneau wrote of the crisis in verse; both were a tonic for 
the wavering. Even Washington did not then speak of him as 
‘that rascal Freneau,’ and that characterization even from Wash- 
ington cannot rob him of the glory of having been ‘the Poet of the 
Revolution’ who gave his health, his entire fortune, almost his 
life, and all his heart to the cause of liberty. 

The close of the war found him in New York barely existing on 
crumhs from the table of an editor. His was a familiar figure in the 

1 Life, 129. 


160 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Merchants’ Coffee-House at Wall and Water Streets where leading 
men congregated. The problem then was to get the necessities of 
life, and literary work was not then included among the means. 
This was the condition in which Madison found him. He knew the 
story of his poet friend, and thus it came about that the plan was 
made for the ‘Federal Gazette.’ He was ideally fitted for the task. 
It called for one who could write in the language of the people, 
could wield a scorpion lash, whose heart was in the cause — and no 
greater master of invective was in view, no keener satirist. He 
required no tutoring, and he would accept no orders. He was a 
rebel still, a radical, a crusader for democracy, who looked with 
amusement on ‘aristocracy,’ with hatred on monarchy. He was an 
original thinker, a breaker of idols, an iconoclastic genius. He had 
the wit, the keenness, the quickness, the felicity of his French 
blood, the stern firmness of the Huguenot mind. He was a gusty 
warrior with a lusty blade and he kept it shining in the sun. 

Soon Philadelphia found him a familiar figure in its streets ~ a 
rather little man with slightly stooped shoulders, thin yet muscu- 
lar, who walked briskly like one who knew where he was going. 
In his office at his work he was more imposing, for there one could 
note the high intellectual brow, the dark gray deep-set eyes that 
sometimes blazed under the slightly drooping lids. Usually pen- 
sive in repose, his face lighted with animation when he talked. 
His manners were courteous and refined and women found him 
interesting and gallant. Nor was this democrat a Marat in dress — 
he wore the small-clothes, the long hose, the buckled shoes, and 
cocked hat, long after others had accepted less picturesque fash- 
ions. He had no vanity, no ambition for place or power, and no 
fear of either. He wore no man’s collar and he was no man’s man. 
‘He was a law unto himself. 


CHAPTER VIII 
THE GAGE OF BATTLE 


I 


HERE was little in the reception of Hamilton’s famous ‘Re- 
port on Manufactures’ during the congressional session of 
1791-92 to foreshadow the part it was to play in American politics. 
Bristling with facts and figures laboriously assembled, the plea for 
protection and bounties for manufacturers was plausibly presented. 
Foreseeing the hostility of the farmers, the most persuasive argu- 
ments were reserved for them. The diversification of mdustry 
would increase the demand for the products of the farm; the elimi- 
nation of foreign competition would decrease the cost of manu- 
factured goods; and the certainty of immigration would prevent 
any labor shortage with agriculturists. Better still, the factories 
would afford the farmers an opportunity to put their wives and 
children to work in the mills.!. Four sevenths of the employees of 
the cotton mills of England were women and children, and many 
of the latter of ‘tender age.’? In the making of nails and spikes 
young boys were able to do the work.’ As to the constitutional 
objection, that was disposed of by the doctrine of implied powers. 
The newspapers, including Freneau’s, ran the report in full, but 
nothing came of it for the moment. No one was shocked at the 
idea of working women and children of tender age. After a while a 
writer in Freneau’s paper warned that a new field was being 
opened ‘for favoritism, influence and monopoly.’ 4 Madison wrote 
to Pendleton that ‘if Congress can do whatever in their discretion 
can be done with money . . . the Government is no longer a limited 
one.’> But this ‘Report’ resulted in less controversy than any 
that had preceded. There was no storm — just a bare stirring of 
the leaves. 
But Hamilton was not content to allude to brighter worlds — 
he led the way. Long before, he had been impressed with the in- 


1 Hamilton’s Works, rv, 91. 2 Ibid, 3 Ibid., 166. 
4 National Gazette, June 18, 1792. 5 Writings, 1, 545. 


162 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


dustrial possibilities of beautiful Passaic Falls in New Jersey, mid- 
way between New York and Newark at the very door of the mar- 
ket. Just how long he was in interesting moneyed men in his am- 
bitious plans for a great national manufactory there, we do not 
know. But even before the publication of his ‘Report,’ he had 
personally appeared with others interested before the New Jersey 
Legislature to ‘elucidate anything that may appear obtuse’ in the 
request for a charter.! It was only a little trip from Philadelphia 
to Trenton. Then, one summer day, a group of men appeared at 
the Falls to purchase land and select the precise sites for the 
various mills, and the small but masterful figure of Hamilton was 
the center of the group. All sorts of things would be manufactured, 
cotton mills predominating, and it would become — this city of 
Paterson — the industrial capital of the Republic. Major lEn- 
fant was summoned to the task of making this industrial beehive 
beautiful, and he responded.? Soon there were grumblings among 
the farmers, outraged because the charter that Hamilton’s in- 
fluence had secured gave the company the right to dig canals on 
any man’s land. The other manufacturers were indignant be- 
cause the new factory was to be free from taxation for ten years, 
and its employees were to be excused from military services ex- 
cept in cases of dire necessity. ‘A Manufacturer’ wrote a vehe- 
ment protest, mentioning Hamilton by name, and denouncing the 
act of the legislature as vicious beyond comparison.’ Soon the 
Philadelphia papers were advertising that the five letters ‘To the 
Yeomanry,’ in pamphlet form, complaining of the privileged na- 
ture of the corporation and of the part played by Hamilton, could 
be had at the various stores of the city. 

But Hamilton was not concerned with the grumblings of the 
groundlings, for he was at high tide. In New York men had sub- 
scribed for a portrait of him by Trumbull, and the subscription 
lists ‘were still open in the coffee-house.’* He had become the 
idol of the most powerful class. A little later, Trumbull’s work 
completed, ‘the best that ever came from his pencil,’ it was placed 
temporarily in the old city hall in New York.®> The obscure boy 


1 National Gazette, November 14, 1791. 

2 Spooner’s Vermont Journal, July 31; National Gazette, July 14, 1792. 
3 National Gazette, September 8, 1792. 4 Iiid., January 2, 1792. 
5 Philadelphia Advertiser, July 6, 1792. 


THE GAGE OF BATTLE 163 


from the West Indies had become an institution in the city of his 
adoption. Even so Hamilton was ever vigilant. He had not liked 


the Freneau project from the start, and he was watching it like a 
hawk. 


18% 


When the poet-journalist took an office on High Street and be- 
gan the publication of his paper, there was little to justify grave 
apprehensions. In his first issues the editor had pledged himself to 
the support ‘of the great principles on which the American Re- 
volution was founded,’ and while this smacked of the jabberings 
of Sam Adams, Hancock, and Jefferson, it was probably only a 
gesture. The tone of the early editions was temperate, almost 
academic. The ordinary reader must have thought it harmless 
enough, but Hamilton, who used the press effectively himself, 
examined the articles more critically. There were phrases creep- 
ing in, innocently, perhaps, that Fenno would have scorned. The 
idea that ‘public opinion sets the bounds to every government, 
and is the real sovereign of every free one,’ ! would never have 
soiled the pages of the ‘Gazette of the United States.’ The little 
essays on politics and government were sprinkled all too freely 
with these disturbing suggestions. Only an essay on ‘Nobility’ — 
but why make it the vehicle for the thought that ‘the downfall of 
nobility in France has operated like an early frost toward killing 
the germ of it in America.’ ? With Fenno chiding the critics of 
officials, what more unfortunate than Freneau’s assertion that 
‘perpetual jealousy of the government’ is alone effectual ‘against 
the machinations of ambition,’ and his warning that ‘where that 
jealousy does not exist in a reasonable degree the saddle is soon 
prepared for the back of the people.’ * A defense of parties coupled 
with a denunciation of privilege,’ stiff criticism of ministerial in- 
efficiency apropos of the St. Clair expedition; forceful protests 
against the excise law;* and then an article by ‘Brutus’ on the 
funding system which could not be ignored — these were bad 
enough. That system, said ‘Brutus,’ had given undue weight to 
the Treasury Department ‘by throwing the enormous sum of fifty 

1 National Gazette, December 19, 1791. 3 Jbid., January 19, 1792. 


3 Jbid., January 16, 1792. 4 Ibid., January 23, 1792. 
§ Jiid., by H. H. Brackenridge, February 9, 1792. 


164 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


million dollars into the hands of the wealthy,’ thus attaching them 
to all the Treasury measures ‘by motives of private interest.’ 
Having combined the great moneyed interest, it had been made 
formidable by the Bank monopoly. Out of it all had come the ‘un- 
limited excise laws and imposts’ that ‘anticipated the best re- 
sources of the country and swallowed them all up in future pay- 
ments.’ Because the certificates had fallen to the wealthy, “the 
industrious mechanic, the laborious farmer and poorer classes 
generally are made tributary to the latest generation.’ 1 Rights of 
property? Yes — but there is property in rights.? Be loyal to the 
Union? Yes, but who are the enemies of the Union? ‘Not those 
who favoring measures which, pampering the spirit of speculation, 
disgust the best friends of the Union.’ ‘Not those who promote 
unnecessary accumulations of the debts of the Union.’ Not those 
‘who study by arbitrary interpretations and insidious precedents 
to pervert the limited government of the Union into a govern- 
ment of unlimited discretion.’ ® 

With Freneau hitting his stride, the Federalists began to lose 
their patience. Soon the “United States Chronicle’ of Providence 
learned that the ‘very extraordinary productions’ were probably 
‘the work of some foreigners who wish to reduce the funds in order 
to purchase.’* The ‘Centinel’ of Boston warned that Freneau’s 
paper was ‘supported by a junto for electioneering purposes’ and 
was filled with ‘the most absurd misrepresentations of facts, or 
falsehoods highly injurious to the prevailing character and princi- 
ples of our government and people.’ § 

But it took the articles of ‘Sidney’ to force the fighting. These 
were open attacks on Hamilton and his principles and were 
written with a punch. He assailed the House for abdicating its 
power to originate money bills to the Secretary of the Treasury. 
To delegate that duty was to lie down on a job. And such ‘re- 
ports’! Arguments! Pleas! Sophistries! Thence to the major 
attack. “If we admit that the Secretary is a fallible mortal, and, 
however great his capacity may be, that he is liable to mistakes or 
to be imposed upon, or, in range of hypothesis, if we suppose these 
possible cases, that his political principles do not correspond with 


1 National Gazette, March 15, 1792. 2 Ibid., March 29, 1792. 
8 Ibid., April 2, 1792. 4 Ibid., February 9, 1792. 8 Ibid., July 18, 1792. 


THE GAGE OF BATTLE 165 


the genius of the government, or with public opinion; or that he 
embraces the interests of one class in preference to the interests of 
the other classes, —I say admitting any or all of these circum- 
stances to be possible, then the ministerial mode of influencing the 
deliberations of Congress practiced since the change of the govern- 
ment, is more dangerous than even that which is pursued but 
loudly complained of in Britain.’! These attacks by Sidney con- 
tinued with painful regularity, and Freneau’s paper became a 
scandal in the best-regulated families in Philadelphia. Others 
joined in the fray. ‘A Citizen’ from a remote section, who had 
visited the capital to ‘know more of men and measures,’ speedily 
convinced himself that many members of government ‘were... 
partners with brokers and stock jobbers, and that the banking 
schemes have been too poweriully and effectually addressed to 
their avarice.’ ? ‘Centinel’ warned that ‘the fate of the excise law 
will determine whether the powers of government... are held by 
an aristocratic junto or by the people.’ ? With the pack in hot 
pursuit of his idol, Fenno rushed to the defense with a denuncia- 
tion of the ‘mad dogs’ and ‘enemies of the government.’ Ah, re- 
plied Freneau, welcoming the fight, “I will tell a short story that 
will put the matter in a proper light. A pack of rogues once took 
possession of a church... held in high veneration by the inhabit- 
ants of the surrounding district. From the sanctuary they sallied 
out every night, robbed... all the neighbors, and when pursued 
took shelter within the hallowed walls. If any one attempted to 
molest them there, they deterred him from the enterprise by 
crying, “‘Sacrilege,” and swearing they would denounce him to 
the inquisition as a heretic and an enemy of the Holy Mother 
Church.’ 4 And Freneau persevered in his perversity. Right joy- 
ously he returned to the scandal of speculation. ‘It is worthy of 
notice that no direct denial has ever appeared of the. . . multiplied 
assertions that members of the general government have carried 
on jobs and speculations in their own measures even while those 
measures were depending.’ ® 


1 National Gazette, April 23, 1792. 2 Ibid., May 3, 1792. § Ibid., May 7, 1792. 
4 Jbid., May 10, 1792. 5 Ibid., January 4, 1792. 


166 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


III 


An interesting picture was presented the day after the appear- 
ance of this attack: Emerging from the doorway of the Morris 
house was a distinguished party. Washington himself, sober and 
stately, with his matronly spouse; Hamilton, alert and suave, with 
little Betty; and a tall, loose-jointed man of pleasing aspect whom 
' spectators instantly recognized as Jefferson. Entering carriages 
they drove away to visit Mr. Pearce’s cotton manufactory. No 
one knew better than Washington that a crisis had been reached 
in the relations of his ministers. But a few days before he had sat 
pondering over a letter from Jefferson. It dealt with the reason 
for the growing distrust in government, the fiscal policy of Hamil- 
ton, the disposition to pile up debt, the corruption in Congress — 
and it announced a determination to retire from the Cabinet.! 
Washington, greatly distressed, had earnestly importuned him to 
remain. He had agreed to stay on Avie» but the quarreling was 
becoming intolerable. 

At the factory the little party entered, pausing to examine the 
machinery and comment upon it, Hamilton the irreproachable 
gentleman, courteous, amusing, pleasant, Jefferson observing all 
the amenities of the occasion. It was their last social meeting in 
small company. But if Washington, who had invited them, hoped 
thus to persuade them to drop their quarrel, he was foredoomed 
to disappointment. The cause of their disagreement was ele- 
mental and eternal. They returned to the Morris house after a 
pleasant diversion — and the fight went on. 


IV 


In early June, Fenno and Freneau were lashing each other with 
much shouting. But the editor of the Hamilton paper played 
constantly into the hands of his opponent. He lamented the ap- 
pearance of a ‘faction,’ meaning party, because factions mean 
convulsions under a republican government. It would not be so 
serious if there were a king, because ‘a king at the head of a nation 
to whom all men of property cling with the consciousness that all 
property will be set afloat with the government, is able to crush 

1 Jefferson’s Works, v111, 341-49. 


THE GAGE CF BATTLE 167 


the first rising against the laws.’ ! There must have been high glee 
among the cronies of Freneau in the office on High Street when 
they read it. ‘King,’ ‘men of property’ — Freneau could not have 
dictated the comment for his purpose better. ‘Your paper is sup- 
ported by a party,’ charged Fenno. Yes, agreed Freneau, if ‘by a 
party he means a very respectable number of anti-aristocratic, and 
anti-monarchical people of the United States.’?? But, not to be 
diverted, the poet-editor returned persistently to his indictment. 
*‘Pernicious doctrines have been maintained’ — ‘Members of 
Congress deeply concerned in speculating and jobbing in their own 
measures ... have combined with brokers and others to gull and 
trick their uninformed constituents out of their certificates.’ 3 

‘The names — give us the names,’ demanded Fenno. ‘That 
reminds us,’ said Freneau, ‘of the impudence of a noted prostitute 
of London, who, having a difference with a young man, was by 
him reproached for her profligacy, and called by the plain name 
of her profession. .. . “Ill make you prove it or pay for it,” said 
she. Accordingly, she sued the young man for defamation of 
character, and although half the town knew her character, yet 
nobody could prove her incontinency without owning himself an 
accomplice, and the defendant was lost for want of evidence and 
obliged to pay heavy damages. Thus it is when any man talks of 
speculators — “ prove the fact, sir’ — as if, indeed, the men who 
hired out the pilot boats and the brokers who negotiated the 
securities would come forward to expose their employers and them- 
selves.’ 4 

Thus with charge on charge, with sarcasm and satire, especially 
the latter, Freneau constantly increased the intensity of his as- 
saults. These slashing and insidious attacks did not reach the 
citizens of Philadelphia only — they were copied far and wide. 
The paper itself went into every State. Men were discussing and 
quoting it on the streets, in the coffee-houses of New York, on the 
stage-coaches jolting between the scarcely broken forests of re- 
mote places, about the fireplace in the cabin in the woods. No one 
had followed it with greater rage than Alexander Hamilton. One 
day Fenno’s ‘Gazette’ contained a short letter bearing the signa- 


1 Gazette of the United States, June 6, 1792. 2 National Gazette, June 21, 1792. 
* National Gazette, June 21, 1792. 4 Tbid., June 25, 1792. 


168 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


ture ‘T. L.,’ which started the tongues to wagging all the way from 
O’Eller’s grogshop to Mrs. Bingham’s drawing-room. 


Mr. Fenno: The editor of the National Gazette receives a salary from 
the Government. QuERE — Whether this salary is paid him for transla- 
tions, or for publications, the design of which is to vilify those to whom 
the voice of the people has committed the administration of our public 
affairs — to oppose the measures of government, and by false insinua- 
tions to disturb the public peace? 

In common life it is thought ungrateful to bite the hand that puts 
bread in its mouth; but if a man is hired to do it, the case is different. 


Freneau’s paper had become dangerous, Fenno was unable to 
meet its onslaughts, and thus, anonymously, Hamilton took up 
his pen.! 

Vv 

It was at this time that Hamilton first shocked his friends with 
the disclosure of his temperamental weakness that was to destroy 
his leadership. Persuaded that Freneau’s journal was established 
for the primary purpose of wrecking him, he saw red, lost his 
customary poise and self-control, and, throwing discretion to the 
winds along with his dignity as a minister of State, he entered the 
lists as an anonymous letter-writer. We search in vain through 
the correspondence of his friends for evidence of approval. 

The attack was met by Freneau with a certain dignity. Re- 
producing the ‘T. L.’ letter he wrote: 


The above is beneath reply. It might be queried, however, whether a 
man who receives a small stipend for services rendered as French trans- 
lator to the Department of State, and as editor of a free newspaper ad- 
mits into his publication impartial strictures on the proceedings of gov- 
ernment, is not more likely to act an honest and disinterested part 
toward the public, than a vile sycophant, who obtaining emoluments 
from government, far more lucrative than the salary alluded to, finds his 
interest in attempting to poison the minds of the people by propaganda 
and by disseminating principles and sentiments utterly subversive of the 
true republican interests of the country, and by flattering and recom- 
mending every and any measures of government however pernicious and 
destructive its tendency might be to the great body of the people. The 
world is left to decide the motive of each.? 


_ | Gazette of the United States, July 25, 1792. 8 National Gazette, July 28, 1792 


THE GAGE OF BATTLE 169 


This controversy of mere journalists did not interest Hamilton. 
He was out gunning for bigger game. Thoroughly convinced that 
Jefferson was responsible for much of the contents of Freneau’s 
paper, he hoped to draw his colleague into an open newspaper 
fight and, if possible, drive him from the Cabinet. The relations 
of the two Titans had been growing more and more hostile. They 
disputed across the table in the council room, and at rare times 
seemed at the point of blows. Hamilton knew Jefferson’s opinions 
of his policies — and similar opinions were appearing in the paper 
edited by a clerk in his rival’s office. Nor were they slovenly, 
superficial articles. They were the work of close observers and 
clever controversialists. Not only was he ignorant of the fact that 
many of these were the work of Madison, that Brackenridge wrote 
some, George Tucker, editor of the American edition of Blackstone, 
some,! but he ridiculously underestimated the capacity of Freneau. 
These articles were strong, stinging, effective, and therefore 
Jefferson wrote or dictated them. He would drag Jefferson into 
the arena and have it out. 

Thus, in his letter of August 4, he contemptuously dismissed 
the editor as ‘the faithful and devoted servant of the head of a 
party,’ and launched his personal bitter attack on Jefferson. If he 
wished to attack ‘the Government,’ why didn’t Jefferson resign? ” 
‘Can he reconcile it to his own personal dignity, and the principles 
of probity, to hold an office under it, and employ the means of 
official influence in that opposition?’ Besides, he was an enemy of 
the Constitution. He had been opposed to it and had written his 
objections ‘to some of his friends in Virginia.’ ? Four days later, 
Freneau denied in an affidavit published in Fenno’s paper that 
Jefferson had any connection with the ‘National Gazette’ or had 
written or dictated a line. The same day, in his own paper, he 
raised the curtain on Hamilton’s nom de plume, with a comment 
that ‘all is not right with certain lofty-minded persons who fondly 
imagined their ambitious career was to proceed without check or 
interruption to the summit of their wishes.’ To which he added 

1 Austin, Freneau, 170, note. 

2 No one knew better than Washington that Jefferson would have resigned in the spring 
had he not been importuned to remain. 


3 One of these was Washington, to whom he made the objections mentioned in a previous 
chapter. 


170 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


that “the devil rageth when his time is short.’! In his letter of 
August 11th, Hamilton dismissed the denial unimpressively. At 
this moment he thought himself hot on the trail. Elias Boudinot, 
he recalled, had once told him of the part Madison had played. If 
he could get an affidavit from Boudinot! Acting on an impulse, 
he wrote him that ‘a friend’ was writing the attacks on Jefferson. 
He had mentioned the Boudinot conversation to that ‘friend’ who 
was anxious to have an affidavit. ‘It is of real importance that it 
should be done,’ he wrote. ‘It will confound and put down a man 
who is continually machinating against the public happiness.’ 2 
But Boudinot does not appear to have had any stomach for the 
mess, albeit he, like every one else, must have known that the 
‘friend’ was Hamilton himself. No affidavit was forthcoming. 

While he was waiting vainly for the affidavit, an anonymous 
writer in Freneau’s paper, referring to Hamilton’s assaults, made 
a counter-charge. What about ‘the immaculate Mr. Fenno’? Did 
he not have the printing of the Senate, ‘the emoluments of which 
office are considerable?’ Did he not ‘enjoy exclusively the printing 
of the Treasury department where it seems he has rendered him- 
self a particular favorite?’ Was he not already ‘making his ap- 
proaches to another office on Chestnut Street [the Bank],’ and 
in a fair way to secure ‘if not already in possession of the business 
appertaining thereto?’ % 

On August 18th, Hamilton appeared again to sneer at Freneau’s 
announcement that he would pay no attention to the charges until 
the author came forward to make them in the open. “It was easily 
anticipated that he might have good reasons for not discovering 
himself, at least at the call of Mr. Freneau, and it was necessary 
for him to find shelter.’ 

Freneau’s affidavit! scoffed a writer in Hamilton’s organ. He 
had no faith in it. The editor had certainly not sworn upon the 
Bible. Had he taken the oath on Jefferson’s ‘Notes on Virginia’? 4 

But Hamilton was already discovered. No one there was in 
public life from Washington down who did not know the author. 
The amazing spectacle was the talk of the taverns and the dinner 


1 National Gazette, August 8, 1792. ? Hamilton’s Works, x, 14-15. 
§ National Gazette, August 15, 1792. 
* Gazette of the United States, August 25, 1792. 


THE GAGE OF BATTLE 171 


tables, and was beginning to assume the proportions of a scandal. 
Washington was shocked and aggrieved. He would stop it. 


VI 


On August 26th he tried his art of conciliation, appealing to both 
Hamilton and Jefferson, albeit, as he knew, the latter had not 
written a line. Both replied in September, Hamilton admitting 
the authorship of the articles, and declared his inability ‘to recede 
now.’ He had been forced to write. He had been ‘the object of 
uniform opposition from Mr. Jefferson’; ‘the object of unkind 
whispers and insinuations from the same quarter’; and he had 
evidence that the ‘National Gazette’ had been instituted by Jefier- 
son ‘to render me and all the objects connected with my adminis- 
tration odious.’ He had been most patient. In truth, he had 
‘prevented a very severe and systematic attack upon Mr. Jefferson 
by an association of two or three individuals, m consequence of 
the persecution he brought upon the Vice-President by his in- 
discreet and light letter to the printer, transmitting Paine’s pam- 
phlet.’ ! 

Jefferson replied that in private conversation he had ‘utterly 
disapproved’ of Hamilton’s system, which ‘flowed from principles 
adverse to liberty and calculated to undermine and demolish the | 
Republic by creating an influence of his department over members 
of the legislature.’ He had seen this influence ‘actually produced’ 
by ‘the establishment of the great outlines of his project by the 
votes of the very persons who, having swallowed his bait, were 
laying themselves out to profit by his plans.’ Then, too, Hamilton 
had constantly interfered with his department, particularly in re- 
lation to England and France.’ As to Freneau, he hoped he ‘would 
give free place to pieces written against the aristocratic and 
monarchical principles.’ He and Fenno, he said, ‘are rivals for the 
public favor. The one courts them by flattery, the other by cen- 
sure, and I believe it will be admitted that the one has been as 
servile as the other has been severe.’ Then, turning again to 
Hamilton: ‘But is not the dignity and even decency of govern- 
ment committed when one of its principal Ministers enlists him- 
self as an anonymous writer or paragraphist for either the one or 


1 Hamilton’s Works, v11, 303-06. 2 The evidence is conclusive on this point. 


172 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


the other of them?’ As for criticism of governmental measures, 
“no government ought to be without censors; and where the press 
is free no one ever will. If virtuous, it need not fear the free opera- 
tion of attack and defense. Nature has given to man no other 
means of sifting out the truth, either in religion, law, or politics. 
I think it is as honorable to government neither to know nor notice 
its sycophants, as it would be undignified and criminal to pamper 
the former and persecute the latter.’ } 

Thus ended Washington’s attempt to intervene. Hamilton had 
refused to discontinue his attacks, and, within two days after 
replying to Washington’s appeal, he was again appearing in the 
‘Gazette of the United States.’ 


VII 


Even while Hamilton and Jefferson were writing their letters, 
the fight was proceeding merrily, if bloodlessly, in the papers. 
“Aristides,’ none other than Madison, had gone to the defense of 
his leader in an article in Fenno’s paper on Jefferson’s attitude 
toward the Constitution. No one was so well qualified to know, 
unless it was Washington himself. He had sat in the Convention, 
a leading figure, and listened to Hamilton’s speeches and proposals, 
and had been in correspondence with Jefferson. It was not this 
defense that made Fenno restive. It was a pointed attack. ‘It is 
said, Mr. Fenno, that a certain head of a department is the real 
author or instigator of these unprovoked and unmanly attacks on 
Mr. Jefferson — and that the time of that gentleman’s departure 
from the city on a visit to his home was considered as best suited 
to answer the design it was intended to effect.’ ‘Unmanly attack’ 
and an insinuation of cowardice! Fenno took the precaution to add 
a note warning that no further letters would be printed containing 
‘personal strictures’ unless the name of the author was furnished 
‘in case of emergency.’ Coffee and pistols — was it coming to 
that? * Freneau had no such concern, for on the same day a writer 
in his paper referred to the ‘base passions that torment’ Hamilton, 
and called upon the author of the anonymous articles to ‘explain 
the public character who on an occasion well known to him, could 


1 Jefferson’s Works, v1r1, 394-408. 
2 Gazette of the United States, September 8, 1792. 


THE GAGE OF BATTLE 173 


so far divest himself of gratitude and revolt from the spirit of his 
station as to erect his little crest against the magnanimous chief 
who is at the head of our civic establishment, and has on many 
free occasious since spoken with levity and depreciation of some of 
the greatest qualities of that renowned character; and now gives 
himself out as if he were his most cordial friend and admirer, and 
most worthy of public confidence on that account.’ ! 

Two days after refusing Washington’s request for a cessation, 
Hamilton returned to the attack in answer to the charge of the 
‘National Gazette’ that he had not liked the Constitution, and 
had pronounced the British monarchy the most perfect govern- 
ment. All this he stoutly denied. The records and debates of the 
Constitutional Convention were then under secrecy, and members 
who had heard his speeches were under the ban of silence. He felt 
safe. This is the most amazing letter of the series. 

And so the dismal affair dragged on. Another letter appeared 
reiterating a connection between Jefferson and Freneau; another 
charging that Jefferson was opposed to the Constitution and 
against paying the public debt; still another complaining of 
Jefferson’s interference with the Treasury Department. Then 
' another on Jefferson and the Constitution, and finally, two months 
after Washington’s appeal, demanding that Jefferson, who re- 
mained in the Cabinet on the earnest solicitation of Washington, 
withdraw. ‘Let him not cling to the honor or emolument of an 
office, whichever it may be that attracts him, and content himself 
with defending the injured rights of the people by obscure or in- 
direct means.’ 

Meanwhile, Jefferson had refused to be drawn into the con- 
troversy personally. The situation had become painful — the 
Philadelphia drawing-rooms lifting their brows at him. His 
official associations were unpleasant, but he never touched pen to 
a paper intended for publication. Only in his personal letters did 
he pour forth his bitterness against his colleague. ‘The indecency 
of newspaper squabbling between two public Ministers,’ he wrote 
Edmund Randolph, ‘has drawn something like an injunction from 
another quarter. Every fact alleged ...as to myself is false.... 
But for the present lying and scribbling must be free to those who 

2 National Gazette, September 8, 1792. 


174 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


are mean enough to deal in them and in the dark.’ 1 He had hoped 
for an early retirement, and the attacks had indefinitely postponed 
the realization of his desire. ‘These representations have for some 
weeks past shaken a determination which I had thought the whole 
world could not have shaken,’ he wrote Martha.?, Meanwhile, the 
small-fry partisans were busy in all the papers. The effect, on the 
whole, had been favorable to Jefferson, making him the idol of the 
democrats everywhere. ‘It gives us great pleasure,’ said a Boston 
paper, ‘to find that the patriotic Jefferson has become the object 
of censure, as it will have a happy tendency to open the eyes of the 
people to the strides of certain men who are willing to turn every 
staunch Republican out of office who has discerning to ken the 
arbitrary measures, and is honestly sufficient to reveal them.’ ? 
To the ‘Independent Chronicle’ the ‘slander and detraction’ of 
men like Jefferson seemed ‘a convincing proof of the badness of 
the cause behind it.’4 The onslaught had in no wise weakened 
Jefferson’s faith in the effectiveness of the ‘National Gazette.’ The 
smoke had not lifted from the field when he was rejoicing because 
it was ‘getting into Massachusetts under the patronage of Han- 
cock and Sam Adams.’* Even Freneau found the democrats 
rallying around him. 


It is a Fact [wrote a correspondent] that immense wealth has been ac- 
cumulated into a few hands, and that public measures have favored that 
accumulation. 

It is a Fact that money appropriated to the sinking of the debt has 
been laid out, not so as most to sink the debt, but so as to succor gamblers 
in the funds. 7 

It is a Fact that a Bank law has given a bounty of from four to five 
million dollars to men in great part of the same description. 

It is a Fact that a share of this bounty went immediately into the 
pockets of the very men most active and forward in granting it. 

These, Mr. Freneau, are facts —... severe, stubborn, notorious facts.® 


Vir 


Thus Hamilton’s remarkable attack had only whetted the appe- 
tite of the Jeffersonians for battle — and a national campaign was 


1 Jefferson’s Works, vit, 411. 

2 Domestic Life, 214-15; also letter to T. M. Randolph, Ibid., 215. 

8 Quoted by Freneau, September 19, 1792, _ # October 18, 1792. 

§ Randall, u, 102; to Randolph. 6 National Gazette, October 20, 1792. 


THE GAGE OF BATTLE 175 


in progress. The unanimous reélection of Washington was uni- 
versally demanded, but why should the ‘aristocratic’ and ‘mon- 
archical’ author of ‘The Discourses of Davilla’ be chosen again? 
At any rate, efforts could be made to change the political complex- 
ion of Congress. 

There were mistakes, blunders, tragedies, that could be used 
to affect public opinion. What more shocking than the humiliating 
collapse of the General St. Clair expedition against the Indians in 
the western country? Gayly enough had the unfortunate com- 
mander set forth with twenty-three hundred regular troops and a 
host of militiamen. There had been a scarcity of provisions and 
inadequate preparations. Hundreds of soldiers, consumed with 
fever, shaken with chills, had vainly called for medicine. Many 
died, hundreds deserted in disgust, and finally but fourteen hun- 
dred worn and weary, sick and hungry men remained to face 
the enemy. It was easy enough to blame St. Clair, and, as he 
passed through the villages en route to the capital, the people 
flocked about to hiss and jeer. 

But why the lack of proper preparations? Why the insufficiency 
of the commissary? Even the officials in Philadelphia were prone 
to find extenuations for the failure of St. Clair. A correspondent 
of the Boston ‘Centinel,’ dining with some of the first official 
characters where the tragic collapse of the expedition had been dis- 
cussed, found ‘not one expression dropped to his prejudice.’ 1 The 
Jeffersonians were aiming higher than St. Clair. There was Knox, 
Secretary of War — what had he to say in defense of the honesty 
of the army contractor, to the negligence of the quartermaster? 
The House investigating committee bore heavily on these two in 
its report — but who was responsible for the cupidity of the one 
and the inefficiency of the other? Soon the Jeffersonian press was 
attacking Knox with distressing regularity, picturing him as the 
‘Philadelphia Nabob.’ 2? Was he not squandering public money on 
‘splendor’ and ‘extravagance’? Soon the more irresponsible of the 
gossip-mongers were whispering that he had profited financially. 
‘Infamous!’ screamed the Federalist press. ‘The public monies 
have never been in the hands of Mr. Knox.’ * ‘But who made ar- 


1 January 11, 1792. 2 Independent Chronicle, May 2, 1792. 
8 Centinel, June 9, 1792. 


176 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


rangements with the dishonest contractor?’ replied the Jeffer- 
sonians. ‘Who selected the quartermaster who let the soldiers 
starve?’ 

All through the summer and autumn this was the talk in the 
taverns and coffee-houses, but with the bursting of the bubble of 
speculation a far more effective weapon of assault was at hand. To 
this inevitable outcome of the gambling mania Jefferson had 
looked forward with the utmost confidence. He had seen money 
‘leaving the remoter parts of the Union and flowing to [Phila- 
delphia] to purchase paper’; had seen the value of property falling 
in places left bare of money — as much as twenty-five per cent in 
a year in Virginia. Extravagance, madness everywhere.’ As a 
result in the remoter sections the hatred of the speculator had 
reached the stage of hysteria. ‘Clouds, when you rain, bleach him 
to the skin,’ prayed a Georgia paper. ‘When you hail, precipitate 
your heaviest globes of ice on his ill-omened pate. Thunders, when 
you break, break near him, shatter an oak or rend a rock full in 
his view. Lightning, when you burst, shoot your electric streams 
close to his eyelids. Conscience, haunt him like a ghost.... Ye 
winds, chill him; ye Frost, pinch him, freeze him. Robbers meet 
him, strip him, scourge him, rack him. He starved the fatherless 
and made naked the child without a mother.’ ? Even the Worces- 
ter correspondent of the orthodox Boston ‘Centinel’ complained 
that ‘as soon as one bubble bursts another is blown up’ and ‘we 
are in the way of becoming the greatest sharpers in the universe’ 
— all ‘assuredly anti-republican.’ ? When a town meeting was ad- 
vertised for Stockbridge, a village wit penciled on the poster the 
purpose of the conference: ‘To see if the town will move to New 
York and enter into the business of speculation.’ 4 While publish- 
_ ing these letters and stories the Federalist organ in Boston did it 
with the sneer: ‘They who are in — Grin. They who are out — 
Pout. They who have paper — Caper. They who have none — 
Groan.’ ® 

Then in April, with the failure of Colonel Duer in New York the 
crash came. Many went to ruin in the wreckage, and New York 
became a madhouse, with business paralyzed, and Duer taking to 


1 Jefferson’s Works, vir, 315-18. 2 Independent Chronicle, May 17, 1792. 
3 March 14, 1792. 4 Centinel, March 28, 1792. ’ March 14, 1792. 


~ 


THE GAGE OF BATTLE 177 


flight. He had been among the most favored of the beneficiaries 
of Hamilton’s policies, rising from opulence overnight, and he was 
among the first to fall from their abuse.! The brutality and cow- 
ardice of the speculators intensified the general contempt for the 
tribe. ‘Instead ef exerting themselves to preserve some kind of 
moral character,’ wrote a New York correspondent of the ‘Mary- 
land Journal,’ ‘they are endeavoring to lower themselves still 
more by descending to the mean level of fish women and common 
street boxers.’ * 

All this was viewed by Hamilton with indignation and concern. 
He had sought in every way to discourage the frenzy of specula- 
tion, and had used his office to protect the public wherever pos- 
sible. But it began with the funding system — and with thou- 
sands that was enough. Instantly the Jeffersonian press was hot 
on the trail. ‘Business has not been benefited by Hamilton’s 
Bank,’ declared the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ ‘for a merchant can 
- scarcely venture to offer his note for $100, while a speculator can 
obtain thousands for no other purpose than to embarrass com- 
merce.’ Look around and see who have obtained wealth. “Specu- 
lators, in general, are the men.’ Thus, ‘the industrious merchant 
is forced to advance to the government thousands, while the 
gambling speculator is receiving his quarterly payments.’* A 
Maryland correspondent of Louden’s New York ‘Register’ ‘could 
not help thinking Mr. Madison’s discriminating propositions 
would have prevented in great measure the exorbitant rage of 
speculation.’ # Meanwhile, Fenno was denouncing the critics as 
‘anarchists’ and enemies of the Government, which only intensi- 
fied their rage. ‘Our objection is not to paying off the debt,’ pro- 
tested an indignant critic, ‘but to... the excise, failure to dis- 
criminate, the play to speculation’; and if all who shared these 
views could be assembled it ‘would make the greatest army that 
ever was on one occasion collected in the United States.’ * In the 
Boston ‘Centinel,’ John Russell was taking a lighter tone. ‘The 
suffering yeomanry burdened with taxes? Why not simply elimi- 
nate all State and National debts and forget them?’® The storm? 


1 Pickering, letter to wife, 111, 27. 2 April 13, 1792. 3 April 19, 1792, 
4 May 28, 1792. 5 Gazette of the United States, October 10, 1792. 
§ ‘Tronicus,’ April 21, 1792. 


178 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


What of it? ‘The Six Per Cents, a first rate, belonging to the fleet 
commanded by Admiral Hamilton, notwithstanding several hard 
Country gales, and a strong lee current setting out of the Hud- 
son and Delaware is still working to windward and bids fair to 
gain her destined port.’ ! 


Ix 


With such attacks and counter attacks in the papers, the cam- 
paign of 1792 was fought, with the bitter gubernatorial battle be- 
tween John Jay and George Clinton in New York setting the pace 
in the spring. The Federalists had set their hearts on the crushing 
of Clinton, and but for the frown of Hamilton, Burr might have 
joined them in the attempt.? The campaign was spectacular, and 
class feeling and prejudice played a part. Jay was an aristocrat 
by birth and temperament, and this gave the Clintonians their 
cue. Up, Plebs, and at ’em! An aristocrat against a democrat, the 
rich against the poor. Had not Jay said that ‘those who own the 
country ought to govern it’? Had not Jay’s Constitution disfran- 
chised thousands on the score of their poverty? Were not the 
speculators, the stock-jobbers, the bankers, the gamblers, swin- 
dlers, and the forces of privilege supporting Jay? ® The result was 
the election of Clinton, on a technicality, and instantly there was 
an uproar, broken bones and bloody noses, coffee-house quarrels 
and blows, wild talk of a revolutionary convention and the seating 
of Jay with bayonets, and serious bloodshed was prevented only 
through the efforts of Hamilton, Jay, and King. Never had party 
feeling run so high, and several duels were fought in the course of a 
week.® The defeated or cheated candidate was accorded the ac- 
clamations due a conqueror on his journey from his judicial circuit 
to New York where he was given a testimonial dinner.6 The 
democrats were none the less jubilant because of the questionable 
nature of their triumph, and at a dinner in honor of Clinton, the 
Tammany braves rose to the toast, ‘Thomas Jefferson,’ and gave 
their war-whoop.’ 

The bitterness in New York spread to various parts of the 


1 Centinel, March 17, 1792. 2 Alexander, 50. #3 Ibid., 53. 4 King’s Works, 1, 408-15, 
® Bache’s General Advertiser, July 19, 1792. 6 Tbid., July 13, 1792. 
™ Hammond, 1, 72. 


THE GAGE OF BATTLE 179 


country where the Jeffersonians were fighting brilliantly, with 
clever strategy, to gain seats in the Congress. Some of the Federal- 
ists, who were to prove themselves generally inferior except in a 
smashing charge, and incapable of maintaining their morale in a 
siege or in reverses, were even then growing pessimistic. ‘Perhaps 
you are not informed,’ wrote George Cabot to Theophilus Parsons, 
‘that in Pennsylvania and New York the opponents are well com- 
bined and are incessantly active, while the friends discover a want 
of union and a want of energy.’?1 And Parsons, in melancholy 
mood, was convinced that the Government had ‘seen its best 
days.’ 2 Woe to the politician who enters the reminiscent stage 
when confronted by a virile opponent looking to the future. There 
was little in the New England of 1792 to depress the Federalists. 
Only a little evidence that among the working-men in Boston 
‘heresies’ were making their way; only reports that ‘itinerant 
Jacobins’ were haranguing the curious in the bar-rooms of Rhode 
Island and Vermont; only the strange spectacle of ‘drill masters’ 
meeting with people of no property or importance to organize 
them to battle for democratic principles.* Only this, and a strange 
doctrine creeping into Vermont papers. In choosing members of 
Congress who should be selected? asked a ‘Land Holder’ of that 
State. ‘What class of people should they represent? Who are the 
great body of the people? Are they Lawyers, Physicians, Mer- 
chants, Tradesmen? No — they are respectable Yeomanry. The 
Yeomanry therefore ought to be represented.’ * In Maryland a 
ferocious fight was waged under the eyes of both Hamilton and 
Jefferson, for both were interested in the fate of Mercer who had 
slashed right lustily at the policies of Hamilton, making no secret 
of his belief that they were bottomed on corruption. He had vital- 
ized the democrats of Maryland, extending his interest into dis- 
tricts other than his own, and arranging for candidates to oppose 
the sitting Federalists in the House. McHenry, who kept Hamil- 
ton informed of the progress of the fight, hoped to array the Ger- 
man Catholics against the obnoxious Mercer through the inter- 
vention of Bishop Carroll, whom he thought more influential than 
the better known Charles Carroll of Carrollton. A man was em- 


1 Life of Parsons, 468-69. 2 Ibid., 467-68. 8 Robinson, 9. 
4 Spooner’s Vermont Journal, August 7, 1792. 5’ McHenry (to Hamilton), 136-37. 


180 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


ployed by the energetic McHenry to circulate bills against Mercer, 
who fought back, and gave blow for blow. He was charged with 
having said that Hamilton had tried to bribe him in the Assump- 
tion fight; ! that he was personally interested in the contract for 
supplying the western army, and privately engaged in the purchase 
of securities. This, Mercer was to disavow, and Hamilton’s friends 
were to show that the conversation between the Marylander and 
the Secretary had been in the presence of company and in jest.? 
Even so we may assume that Mercer had painted the incident 
black. He let it be understood that Washington wished his re- 
election, and the celerity with which the President issued a denial 
was probably due to the importunity of Hamilton who did not 
scruple to use him without stint to further the cause of his party.’ 

In North Carolina the Jeffersonians, under the crafty leader- 
ship of picturesque Willie Jones, contested every inch of the 
ground, determined to retire all the Hamiltonians from Congress, 
and before the impetuosity of their charge the Federalists were 
forced to fight defensively and under a cloud. 

In the new State of Kentucky the Jeffersonians were thoroughly 
organized under the leadership of John Brown, a Virginian, edu- 
cated at Princeton and at Jefferson’s alma mater, who had fought 
through the War of Independence. ‘Brown can have what he 
wants,’ Madison wrote his leader in midsummer,® and he took the 
toga. In Virginia the Democrats were strongly in the ascendancy. 
The influence of Jefferson had been strengthened by the acquisi- 
tion of Madison, and Hamilton, in the course of the campaign, 
wrote his famous letter to Colonel Edward Carrington attacking 
both in an effort to satisfy the Virginia Federalists of the justice 
of his own position, but it was blowing against a tornado.’ An 
amazing campaign document — this letter. 

Thus, in 1792, if the Jeffersonians had not yet perfected their 
organization, they had forced sporadic fighting, and the result of 
the congressional elections was greatly to strengthen them in the 
House. 


1 McHenry (to Hamilton), 137, note. 

* New York Daily Advertiser, March 11, 1793, printed a letter from David Ross setting 
this forth in Hamilton’s defense. 

8’ McHenry, 138. | 

* Only one Federalist, William Barry Grove, was elected; Dodd’s Life of Macon. 

5 Madison’s Writings, 1, 460-61. 6 Hamilton’s Works, 1x, 513-35. 


THE GAGE OF BATTLE 181 


x 


It was clear quite early that the Jeffersonians would not permit 
Adams’s reélection to go unchallenged. The press had teemed with 
controversial articles on his books for more than a year. As early 
as March his friends took up the cudgels in his defense. ‘Homo’ 
in the Boston ‘Centinel’ warned that ‘a detestable cordon of de- 
speradoes’ were trying to destroy public confidence in Adams by 
vilification.! Within three months, Hamilton convinced himself 
that the opposition, in dead earnest, had concentrated on Clinton, 
and hastened to warn Adams, who was enjoying the placidity of 
his farm at Quincy.” It is interesting to observe that this plan to 
displace Adams was interpreted by Hamilton as ‘a serious design 
to subvert the government.’ If the candidacy of Clinton was an- 
noying to Hamilton, the warning he received in September of 
the possible candidacy of Aaron Burr was maddening, and he fell 
feverishly to the task of denouncing the ambitions of this ‘embryo 
Cesar’ in letters to his friends.? Clinton ‘has been invariably the 
enemy of national principles,’ he wrote General C. C. Pinckney in 
ordering a mobilization for defense in South Carolina, and as for 
Burr, he was a man of ‘no principles other than to mount, at all 
events, to the full honors of the state, and to as much more as 
circumstances will permit.’ Was Jefferson behind the conspiracy 
against Adams — Jefferson, that man of ‘sublimated and para- 
doxical imagination, entertaining and propagating opinions in- 
consistent with dignified and orderly government?’4 To John 
Steele in North Carolina he wrote in the manner of a commander, 
to inform him ‘that Mr. Adams is the man who will be supported 
by the Northern and Middle States.’ Of course, he had ‘his faults 
and foibles,’ and some of his opinions were quite wrong, but he was 
honest, and loved order and stable government.’ Meanwhile, 
painful complications were threatened in Maryland where a num- 
ber of notables ® joined in a public letter rallying Marylanders 
to the support of Charles Carroll of Carrollton.’ This gave James 


1 March 10, 1792. 2 Adams, Works, vit, 514. 

* King’s Works, 1, 413, 427; Hamilton’s Works, x, 19-20, 20-21. 

4 Hamilton’s Works, x, 23-24. 5 Ibid., x, 27. 

* Judge Samuel Chase, and Benjamin Stoddert, destined to a place in Adams’s Cabinet 
among them. 

4 Maryland Journal, October 16, 1792. 


182 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


McHenry, an idolater of Hamilton, and still tortured by a per- 
sistent, and, as yet, ungratified itch for office, his opportunity. 
He assumed the responsibility for whipping the rebels back into 
line. These signers of the Carroll letter had been imposed upon. 
The fight against Adams was a fight against the Constitution — 
in keeping with the plan of the enemies of government to drive 
able men from office. Had not Hamilton ‘whose attachment to 
the Constitution is unquestionable’ been assailed with virulence? 
Yes, from ‘the master workman in his craft down to the meanest 
of his laborers,’ all were engaged in the dirty work. Thus the sub- 
mission of Carroll’s claims at so late an hour wore ‘a very doubtful 
and invidious aspect.’ Was it done ‘to get ten votes against 
Adams or to promote Carroll’s election?’ Was any one so foolish 
as to think that the Democrats in New York, Pennsylvania, and 
Virginia would desert Clinton? This letter, signed by ‘A Con- 
sistent Federalist,’ was copied by all the Federalist papers of the 
country. 

Meanwhile, Adams, lingering lovingly on his home acres, showed 
no inclination to return to Philadelphia, and it was reported that 
he might not appear to preside over the Senate until late in the 
session. This was an appalling lack of tact. Hamilton, assuming 
the rights of the leader, did not hesitate. ‘I learn with pain that 
you may not be here until late in the session,’ he wrote the loiterer 
behind the firing lines. ‘I fear this will give some handle to your 
enemies to misrepresent... . Permit me then to say it best suits 
the firmness and elevation of your character to meet all events, 
whether auspicious or otherwise, on the ground where station and 
duty call you.’ ? 

By November the press was hotly engaged in the controversy, 
but poor Fenno was to have trouble with his correspondents who 
were to convert his dignified journal into a cock-pit. Adams was 
both pelted and salved on the same page. His writings proved him 
a monarchist at heart, wrote ‘Mutius.’? His writings would be 
appreciated more a century hence, said a defender in the same 
issue. Had he not already been vindicated on one point in the ap- 
pearance of the ‘gorgon head of party’? Freneau cleverly replied 


1 Maryland Journal, October 23, 1792. 2 Hamilton’s Works, x, 28-29. 
? Gazette of the United States, September 26, 1792. 


THE GAGE OF BATTLE 183 


by quoting a laudatory article from an English paper paying 
tribute to the governmental notions of ‘the learned Mr. Adams.’ ! 
Yes, wrote ‘Cornucopia’ in the ‘Maryland Journal,’ ‘it will re- 
quire the whole strength of the federalists to keep poor John 
Adams from being thrust out of the fold.’ 2 

And ‘poor John Adams’ was not entirely happy in his de- 
fenders. Why not reélect him, demanded *Philanthropos’ in a 
glowing tribute, for was he not ‘a man of innocent manners and 
excellent moral character?’ * ‘Why not?’ echoed a scribe in Al- 
bany. He was ‘a reputed aristocrat, at the same time an honest 
man, the noblest work of God.’ 4 From ‘Otsego’ came a more ro- 
bust blow at Adams’s enemies as ‘the jacktails of mobocracy’ 
seeking the defeat of ‘the virtuous Adams’ because he was against 
‘anarchy and disorder.’ Wrong, wrote ‘Portius’ the next day, 
advocating Clinton. ‘Untinctured by aristocracy, and a firm re- 
publican, the patriots of America look to him.’® Titles, titles, 
sneered *Condorcet.’ ‘This rattle which so peculiarly delights 
certain characters. ...He never appears but in the full blaze of 
office, as if every place he went was a Senate, and every circle 
which he invited needed a Vice President.’’? Thus, throughout 
the fall and early winter the lashing and slashing went on, but 
when the time came Adams was reélected, albeit the result was a 
bitter humiliation to the proud, sensitive spirit of the victor. 
Where Washington had been unanimously reélected, Adams had a 
margin of but twenty-seven votes. New York, Virginia, North 
Carolina, and Georgia had moved en masse into the Clinton camp, 
and Kentucky had cast her vote for Jefferson. Five States had 
gone over to the Jeffersonians, and the Federalists had been unable 
to get a unanimous vote in Pennsylvania. But if Adams was hurt, 
Hamilton could bear his pains, for the brilliant, dashing chief of 
the party preferred that the uncongenial man from Braintree 
should not become too perky. 

Thus ended the first year of actual party struggle — Hamilton 
a bit soiled by his descent to anonymous letter-writing, Jefferson 
greatly strengthened by his silence under assault; the Hamilton- 


1 National Gazette, November 24, 1792. 2 November 9, 1792. 
® Gazette of the United States, December 1, 1792, 4 Jhid., January 5, 1793. 
5 Bache’s Daily Advertiser, December 4, 1792. 6 Jbid., December 5, 1792. 


7 [bid., December 15, 1792. 


Re 


184 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


lans triumphant, but not exultant over the reélection of Adams, 
the Jeffersozians, having tasted blood, and tested their weapons, 
more than ever eager for combat and rejoicing in their congres- 
sional gains. 

Hamilton had tried to drive Jefferson from the Cabinet, and 
failed. It was now the latter’s turn. 


CHAPTER IX 
HAMILTON’S BLACK WINTER 


I 


HE winter of 1792-93 was notable in many ways. Not within 

the memory of the oldest inhabitant of Philadelphia had one 
so mild been known. As late as February there had been no in- 
terruption in the navigation of the Delaware, and the papers, 
making much of the catching of shad, were predicting that ‘a 
considerable school may soon be expected.’ In this, however, the 
sons of Ike Walton were to be disappointed, for a snowstorm and 
a northwester soon put an end to fishing.! Even so, the weather 
continued, for the most part, mild beyond the usual. Never had 
society adorned itself with more frills and furbelows, danced more 
feverishly, or pursued its pleasures with greater zest. The elegant 
new Chestnut Street Theater threw open its doors for the enter- 
tainment the mimic world can give, and the aristocracy, along with 
the plebeians, flocked to the play, despite the pouting of the up- 
pish Mrs. Bingham who had been refused a box on her own terms. 
Even the venomous bitterness of the politicians failed to dim the 
lights of the great houses, albeit the followers of Jefferson were 
«ore and more given to understand that they were not wanted 
among the elect. The events, moving rapidly in France, were 
making a distinct cleavage here among the aristocrats and demo- 
crats. The members of the old French nobility, who had left their 
country for their country’s good, were giving the tone to the most 
fashionable dinner tables. Out in the streets the ‘people of no 
particular importance’ were vulgarly vociferous over the trials 
and tribulations of the King and Burke’s beautiful Queen — and 
the Jeffersonians were taking their tone from the howlings of this 
‘mob.’ 

It was evident from the moment Congress convened that a 
tremendous party struggle was impending. The incidents of the 
preceding summer had left their scars. The Jeffersonians were 

1 National Gazette, February 2, 1793. 


186, JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


embittered against Hamilton because of his anonymous attacks, 
and nothing could have done more to unsheathe their swords. The 
truce was over. Washington had permitted Hamilton to continue 
his attacks by disregarding his request; they would not now per- 
mit even Washington to interpose to save Hamilton from their 
assaults. The elections had given them a confidence they had not 
had before. The next Congress would not be so subservient to 
‘the first lord of the Treasury.’! The supercilious assumption of 
superiority on the part of the Federalist leaders would henceforth 
be resented. The war would begin in earnest. 

The line the attack would take was shown early when Fitz- 
simons, one of Hamilton’s henchmen in the House, offered a 
resolution calling for the redemption of so much of the public debt 
as the Nation had a right to redeem, and asking Hamilton ‘to re- 
port a plan for the purpose.’ This was in accordance with the 
custom which had grown up. From the moment he had taken of- 
fice, Hamilton had considered the members of the House, con- 
stitutionally charged with the duty of framing money bills, as his 
automatons. He would determine upon the plans himself, pre- 
pare the bills, and call upon the House to pass them without too 
much discussion. He would manage the finances himself and he 
would not be plagued by foolish questions. For many months the 
committees to which his measures had been referred had been of 
his own choosing. They were his followers, and, not a few of them, 
beneficiaries of his policies. 

The Fitzsimons Resolution was instantly challenged by the 
Jeffersonians as a rather high-handed proposal under a republican 
form of government, and Madison rose to suggest that the House 
should know the exact state of the finances before measures were 
taken for the reduction of the debt. After all, it was with the 
House, not with the Secretary of the Treasury, that money bills 
should originate. At any rate, the House could not act intelli- 
gently without having the facts in its possession. All too long had 
it been patient without definite reports.? 

The feeling of the masses over the by-products of the funding 
system had by this time become deep-seated. Men who had voted 
to create the Bank had been made members of the board of 

1 Freneau’s description, 8 Annals, November 19, 1792, 


HAMILTON’S BLACK WINTER 187 


directors. The ne’er-do-wells of yesterday were riding in coaches 
and building pretentious houses. Hamilton was urging bounties 
or protective duties for manufacturers one day and running over 
to the Falls of Passaic on the next to assist the directors of a cor- 
poration, that was to profit by his recommendations, in selecting 
the sites for the factories. Not a few honestly believed that he was 
personally profiting through governmental measures. Almost 
from the beginning, Senator Maclay had been suspicious of his 
integrity. This utterly false impression grew out of the positive 
knowledge that some of Hamilton’s closest political associates 
were speculating in the securities. ‘Hamilton at the head of the 
speculators, with all the courtiers, are on one side,’ Maclay wrote 
in his diary.1 Only a month before at Mount Vernon, where 
Washington had begged Jefferson to reconsider his determination 
to resign, the latter had charged the head of the Treasury with 
creating ‘a regular system for forming a corps of interested per- 
sons who should be steadily at the orders of the Treasury.’? In 
1790, William Duer retired from Hamilton’s office to become the 
king of the money-chasers, and, going down to ruin in the financial 
crash of the preceding summer, was sending out dire threats of 
startling revelations from the debtors’ prison. Many honest men 
were quite ready to believe that these threats were aimed at 
Hamilton. It was under these conditions that a miserable crea- 
ture by the name of James Reynolds, in prison for a crime against 
the Treasury, sought to blackmail his way out. He had papers in 
his possession to prove some financial transactions with Alexander 
Hamilton. An obscure person of a low order of mentality, he 
hinted at his use as a dummy in business in which a member of the 
Cabinet did not care to appear. These facts reached some mem- 
bers of Congress. 


II 


On December 15th, two sober-faced members of the House and 
one Senator filed into Hamilton’s office in the Pemberton mansion. 
The Secretary knew them all and knew two of them as enemies. 
Frederick Muhlenberg had served as a Speaker in the first House 


1 February 15, 1790. 2 Anas 1, 235-37. 
3 Bassett, The Federalist System. 


188 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


and was to resume that post in the third. A strong character, 
the recognized leader of the Germans, the foremost American 
Lutheran minister of his time, he had played a conspicuous part 
in the Revolution and in the constructive work that followed. 
Abraham Venable was a Representative from Virginia. The Sena- 
tor was James Monroe whose fanatical devotion to Jeffersonian 
ideals and ideas had long since made him the object of Hamilton’s 
contempt. 

As they took seats facing the masterful little man at the desk, 
they had the manner of judges confronting a victim. None of 
them were finished in the art of tactful speech. Bluntly they 
blurted forth their mission — they had evidence of a mysterious 
connection between the Secretary of the Treasury and James Rey- 
nolds. What had Mr. Hamilton to say to that? Even under the 
least provocative circumstances, Hamilton was quick-tempered, 
and here was something to arouse the lion in him. For a moment 
he raged in his resentment. The visitors, a little moved, perhaps, 
stood their ground. They had papers and the right to an explana- 
tion. His fury having consumed itself, Hamilton realized that 
there was something to explain, and he was ready. Would they 
meet him at his house that night? They would. The three men 
rose, bowed, departed. 

When they reached the Hamilton home that winter night, they 
found Oliver Wolcott, the protégé of the host, there before them. 
In the presence of these enemies it was wise to have one friend as a 
witness. The visitors were received with the courtly courtesy 
of which Hamilton was capable, and after they had found chairs 
about the table, he produced some papers of his own, spreading 
them out by the candlelight, before him. Then, quite calmly, and 
with an occasional touch of humor, he made a remarkable con- 
fession. 

It was the old story of a great man’s weakness. One summer day 
in 1791 a Mrs. Reynolds had appeared at his home with a pathetic 
story of her desertion by her husband and a plea for funds to en- 
able her to return to her family in New York. Strangely enough, 
no description of this adventuress has come down to us, but it 
is a reasonable presumption that she was comely. The family of 
Hamilton was in the house. The master was moved. Naturally 


HAN ILTON’S BLACK WINTER 189 


he would accommoé ate her, but at the moment he had no money 
with him. He would take her address and send or bring it in the 
evening. That night the gods looking down from Olympus might 
have seen one of their favorite earth-children furtively making his 
way through the dimly lighted streets, away from the fashionable 
quarter into the section of cheap boarding-houses. The woman 
received him in her room. It was the old story of Cesar and Cleo- 
patra, albeit this was a Cleopatra of the more vulgar sort. ‘After 
that,’ said Hamilton, ‘I had frequent meetings with her at my own 
house, Mrs. Hamilton and her children being absent on a visit to 
her father.’ The comedy hurried on. At length he thought to 
bring it to a termination, and it was then that Mrs. Reynolds 
proved herself a mistress of her art. She was passionately in love. 
A separation would break her heart. Here, surely, was a violent 
attachment — perhaps it would be better to break off gradually. 
The lover was not lacking in the finer sensibilities, and then, too, 
his vanity was pleased.? With the continuance of the amour, Mrs. 
Reynolds, simulating a consuming passion, began to flood her inna- 
moraio with tender epistles.? The climax was on the wing. One 
day an hysterical note announcing the husband’s discovery of her 
infidelity, and warning that, if no answer was forthcoming to the 
letter the Secretary would receive from the irate husband, Mrs. 
Hamilton would be informed. Would it not be wise to see him? 
Hamilton thought so and summoned Reynolds to his office. The 
cunning rascal had his story ready: the wife discovered writing a 
mysterious letter — a black messenger traced to the Hamilton 
house — the accused wife on her knees confessing all.4 After 
negotiations the heartbroken husband decided that a thousand 
dollars would salve his wounded honor. ‘And I will leave the 
town ...and leave her to Yourself to do for her as you think 
proper,’ he added 

In the midst of these painful revelations, Muhlenberg and 
Venable declared themselves satisfied, but Hamilton insisted on 
telling the story to the end. Then followed the most amazing 
part of the tale. The husband invited his wife’s lover to resume 
tle amour. Hamilton was coy. Mrs. Reynolds added her plea in 


1 Hamilton’s Works, vu, 389. 2 TIamilton’s expression, Works, vu, 391. 
® Ibid. 4 Ibid., vi1, 424. § Juid., 427. 


190 JEFFERSON AND HAMIL” ‘ON 


illiterate, pleading letters. The vanity of Ha! 1ilton was likewise 
persuasive, and the comedy was resumed. When he sought to 
escape notice by going by the back way, Reynolds was indignant. 
‘Am I a person of such a Bad carector [character] that you would 
not wish to be seen Coming to my house in the front way?’ he 
wrote.! This should have put Hamilton on his guard, but he fell 
into the trap. A witness had been provided in another black- 
mailer, Clingman, who had been a clerk in Hamilton’s office, and 
was an unspeakable scoundrel. Then more money was demanded. 
Mrs. Reynolds was again alarmed. Her husband was often mo- 
rose and beat her. At times he threatened to murder Hamilton. 
Loans were made. This, then, was the nature of the mysterious 
financial relations with Reynolds. 

When the party rose to leave, Muhlenberg and Venable were 
apologetic — but not so James Monroe. He bowed stiffly, the 
sternness of his features unrelaxed, as the three passed out into 
the winter night. Hamilton had vindicated his official honor at a 
painful sacrifice. It was understood that the confession should 
be sacredly confidential, but in a sense he had lost. As he sat with 
Wolcott before the fire after his tormentors had departed, he real- 
ized that his enemies were out to wreck his official reputation. He 
may have had a premonition of the storm that was about to break. 


III 


Nine days after the scene enacted by candlelight in Hamilton’s 
library, the bill authorizing the President to negotiate a loan of two 
million dollars to be applied to the reimbursement of a loan made 
of the Bank came up for consideration in the House. William 
B. Giles, who was now dividing the leadership of the Jeffersonians 
with Madison, was instantly on his feet with a request for post- 
ponement. Perhaps some method could be found without recourse 
to a new loan. It might be better to pay the loan by selling the 
stock the Nation owned in the Bank. The watchful Sedgwick was 
shocked at the suggestion. Dumping so much stock upon the 
market would reduce the price and not enough money would be» 
realized to meet the country’s obligation to the Bank. It was a 
mild premonitory skirmish.? 

1 Hamilton’s Works, vu, 394. 2 Annals, December 24, 1792. 


HAMILTON’S BLACK WINTER 191 


Christmas Day brought an armistice, but the next day the dis- 
cussion was resumed, with Madison taking a leading part. Why 
was so much more to be borrowed than was demanded by the 
Bank? To his personal knowledge a large sum was lying idle and 
unappropriated in the Treasury. If this balance was appropriated 
by the President, he wanted to know it. A delicate subject to 
discuss, suggested Sedgwick. Not at all, thought Madison. It was 
time for some ‘candid explanation.’ Was the appropriation lying 
dormant in the Treasury, borrowed to meet the obligations to 
France, being demanded by the country to which it was due? The 
important question concerned the diverting of money appropri- | 
ated to that specific purpose to the payment of Bank installments. 
Could gentlemen justify themselves to their constituents for such 
conduct? The debt to France was one of gratitude and justice, 
and he wished the money could be sent thither on the wings of the 
wind. True, the debt in whole was not yet due, but in the critical 
condition of our benefactor, it would no doubt be particularly ac- 
ceptable and he was opposed to the diversion of any part of it. 
Why two millions for the Bank? demanded Giles. True, two 
hundred thousand dollars would be due the Bank on January Ist, _ 
but why two millions? No one had offered an explanation of how 
the money lying dormant was disposed of, or how it was intended 
to dispose of it. No member rose to explain, and the bill was lost. 

During the next month the lobbies, boarding-houses, taverns, 
buzzed with discussions of the finances of the country. After all, 
even the members of the House, presumed to be familiar with the 
fiscal affairs of the Nation, knew scarcely anything. They had ap- 
propriated blindly. There was something uncanny in the silence. 
Would the raising of the curtain disclose skeletons in the closet of 
the Treasury? At any rate, the House had a right to the facts and 
figures. Throughout the month Madison and Giles were fre- 
quently at the table or about the blazing fire at Jefferson’s. Here 
the campaign was planned. The fight should be forced into the 
open’ on the floor of the House. Jefferson could not participate, 
for manifest reasons, but he could direct. Madison could assist in 
the preparation of the resolutions and in the debate. Giles, who 
was a masterful debater, fearless and slashing in attack, could 

1 Annals, December 26, 1792. 


192 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


sponsor the resolutions and lead in the assault. Because of the 
vart he then played, it has been the fashion to dismiss him flip- 
pantly with a shrug and a sneer — but this is absurd. Giles of 
Virginia was unsurpassed by any American debater of his time. 


IV 


Giles was a veritable D’Artagnan of debate, a gusty, lusty Gas- 
con transplanted to the tobacco-fields of Virginia, eager always for 
a fight or a frolic, and lightning-swift with his blade. A blustering 
fellow, true, quick to assert his rights and repel assault, he carried 
himself with a swagger that did not endear him to the Federalists, 
who rather plumed themselves on having a monopoly on that 
particular vice or virtue. But sneers at his ability are absurd. 
He who won the admiration of Patrick Henry,! commanded the 
confidence and respect of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, re- 
ceived the discriminating praise of Randolph of Roanoke,’ and the 
reluctant tribute of Justice Story,’ cannot be sneered from a 
respectable place in history by a wretchedly unfair caricature by 
a partisan English biographer of one of his enemies.‘ 

The young Virginian who appeared in Philadelphia in the winter 
of 1790-91 was not prepossessing in appearance. Of average height, 
the fullness of his person conveyed the impression of a squat figure. 
His face, large, round, but colorless, bore none of the indications of 
genius, albeit there was something of virility in his brown eyes 
that harmonized with the robustness of his physique. One who 
knew him has recorded that he was of fair complexion,® but an- 
other who heard him frequently in debate commented on his dark 
color, and, since his hair and eyes were those of a brunette, we may 
accept the latter as more probable than the former.® All agree that 
he was careless in his dress, after the then prevailing Virginia 
manner,’ although we have the record of one dramatic appearance 
in the Virginia Legislature, at the height of his renown, ‘elegantly 
dressed in blue and buff’ and with the Gascon touch of being 
‘booted and spurred, with a riding-whip in his hand.’*® If there 
was nothing imposing or picturesque in his appearance, his man- 


1 Anderson, Giles, 6. 2 Benton’s Thirty Years’ View, 1, 682-83. 
3 Life and Letters, 1, 158-59. 4 Oliver’s Hamilton, 292-94. 
’ Familiar Letters, 46. ® Justice Story, Life and Letters, 1, 158, 1 [bid. 


* Anderson, Giles, 65-66. 


HAMILTON’S BLACK WINTER 193 


ners were such as to make him stand out conspicuously among his 
fellows. These were such as to impress the none too finished 
Maclay that ‘the frothy manners of Virginia were ever upper- 
most.’ It is easy enough to reconstruct the scene at Washington’s 
table where Maclay met our Gascon, with Giles, the good liver, 
dwelling unctuously on Virginia canvasback ducks, Virginia hams, 
Virginia chickens, and the old Madeira, which was a little more 
mellow when drained from a Virginia glass in a joyous Virginia 
dining-room. Proud of Virginia was this provincial from the 
tobacco country, and proud as D’Artagnan himself of his physical 
prowess, for didn’t he take more manual exercise than any man in 
New England? No place like the Old Dominion where the living 
was ‘fast and fine,’ where from noon to night the people drank 
wine or cherry bounce like gentlemen. Thus he thundered along, 
to the amazement of Maclay, who observed that ‘he practiced on 
his principle every time the bottle passed.’! The picture is no 
doubt true, for Giles was racy of his native soil. The Amelia 
County of his early days was ofthe frontier, with all that that 
implies of the primitive vices and virtues. The sparsely settled 
country, with its miserable roads, lived very much to itself, and 
strangers who ventured among its inhabitants were treated coldly. 
The living was truly ‘fast and fine’ and rather loose, for the 
men were careless, indifferent to dress, heavy drinkers, inveterate 
smokers, their conversations picturesque with profanity; and they 
were fighters, too. Dumas’s three immortals would have found it 
to their liking, and had they encountered young Giles at some 
crossroads tavern they would have taken him to their hearts. The 
spirit of independence flamed on every hearth, and the religious 
dissenters found it a happy hunting-ground.? It was in this at- 
mosphere that Giles grew up. Like most of the Jeffersonian lead- 
ers, he was a frontiersman. 

When he went to Princeton to complete his education, we get 
again the D’Artagnan touch. He set forth like a Virginia gentle- 
man with his negro slave to serve him, no doubt kicking, cursing, 
and loving him all the way. Then followed a law course at William 
and Mary — and then a law office was opened in the little tobacco 
town of Petersburg. We are interested in this period of his career 

1 Maclay, 374. 3 Anderson, Giles, 3. 


194 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON | 


only in that it throws light on his character and capacity. He 
favored the ratification of the Constitution, and, as a fascinated 
spectator of the debates in the Virginia Convention, formed a deep 
admiration for Madison. In the evenings he argued for ratifica- 
tion at the tavern, no doubt in the taproom. Hearing him one 
night, George Mason, a leader of the opposition, made the com- 
ment that “he has as much sense as one half of us, though he is on 
the wrong side.’! He was not, then, an anti-Federalist on the 
Constitution. 

Immediately on entering Congress at twenty-eight, he com- 
manded attention, for he had a genius for congressional life. He 
became at once a giant in debate. When John Randolph, more 
cynic than flatterer, pronounced Giles the Charles James Fox of 
the House, he referred to the impression made by the Virginian in 
action. Fox was a student; Giles was not. Fox was capable of 
sustained research; Giles was not. Fox was a lover and reader of 
books, and Giles cared nothing for them. He bore a closer resem- 
blance to Mirabeau or Danton in his methods, absorbing his 
knowledge from others in conversation. In the tavern, on the 
highway, at the dinner table, he was a tireless talker, and by 
provoking his friends into discussion he tested, corrected, and 
formed his impressions of events and measures. His mind absorbed 
like a sponge, his memory was retentive. The idea that Jefferson 
or Madison outlined his speeches for him is ludicrous. He merely 
assimilated what they said — and then gave it out more force- 
fully than either could in debate.? 

It is impossible to reconcile the slurring references of some 
historians to his manner in debate with the speeches that speak 
for themselves on the musty pages of the ‘Annals of Congress.’ 
Here was a man speaking directly to a purpose. No critic need 
kill off his Roman consuls, for there were none. No craving here 
for a reputation for erudition. No mere rhetorical flourishes to 
confuse the sense. No theatrical appeals to the emotions. No 
verbosity at all — but ‘a clear, nervous expression, a well-digested 
and powerful condensation of language,’ which could make an im- 
pression on the scholarly Story. That great jurist, an unfriendly 
witness, could not hear him without admiration. ‘He holds his 

1 Anderson, Giles, 8. 2 Benton, I, 682. 


HAMILTON’S BLACK WINTER 195 


subject always before him,’ he wrote, ‘and surveys it with un-— 
tiring eyes; he points his objects with calculated force and sustains 
his positions with penetrating and wary argument. He certainly 
possesses great strength of mind.’ ! 

Having prepared himself to meet all comers, he thus dashed to 
the combat. Having assimilated all that he had absorbed, his 
native resourcefulness and ready command of good plain English 
did the rest. He spoke with the forceful fluency which was the 
best possible substitute for eloquence. A powerful voice, a virile 
manner, compelled attention and respect. Did an enemy attack 
him as he rushed along? He either crushed him with brutal 
strength, or cleverly ducked the blow — and was on his way again. 


Instinctively he knew when to strike and when to dodge. When 


on the floor, he dominated the scene. This was the man, so much 
belittled, whom Benton wrote down in cold deliberation as ‘the 
most accomplished debater which his country has ever seen.’ This 
the man selected in the conferences of Jefferson and Madison to 
lead the attack on the Secretary of the Treasury. 


Vv 

During this period of waiting, with the gossips busy in the 
taverns and the streets, Freneau was zealously seeking to create 
the right atmosphere for the attack. With the Hamiltonians as- 
cribing all prosperity to the policies of their chief, Freneau and 
other editorial enemies were making much of the protest of 
‘Patriot,’ who had been ruined through the abuse of these fiscal 
policies. 


The tale is true [it ran]. I loved my country. In 1775, my only son 


‘ought on Bunker Hill. . .. His mother sent the chair down to carry him 


lome. She wiped the blood from his face and dressed the wound in his 
breast. He died. My neighbor, Smallacre . .. said it was the proper re- 
ward for rebellion, but that a halter would have been more proper. I 
persevered in the cause of freedom. Congress wanted money — I called 
in my debts and sold all my land excepting forty acres. In... 1778 I had 
12,000 in paper. I loaned the whole, and when they were consolidated at 
forty for one I had a loan office certificate for $300. In 1784 the General 
Court issued a large tax. As I could obtain neither the interest or princi- 
pal of my loan office note I was obliged to sell it. My neighbor, Smallacre, 


1 Story, 1, 158-59. 


196 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON © 


saved his property from the waste of a cause to which he was heartily 
opposed, and he appeared to buy my note at Three Shillings for Twenty. 
By this means I paid my State tax of Nine pounds, ten shillings and had 
four pounds left for town and parish taxes. As my son was dead I was 
content to be poor... My old chair and horse remained ... My neigh- 
bor, Smallacre, has now become rich by purchase of public securities from 
people distressed as I was. He tells me that our Hancocks and our Sam 
Adams and those kind of men know how to pull down a government, but 
do not know how to build one.! 


Prosperity? Yes, but for whom? demanded the enemies of 
Hamilton, poking the ‘Patriot’s’ protest under the nose of his de- 
fenders. With the Hamiltonians crediting their idol with all the 
good things that had occurred, Freneau was moved to mirthful 
verse: 

‘Whales on our shores have run aground, 
Sturgeons are in our rivers found — 

Nay — ships have on the Delaware sailed, 

A sight most new. 

Wheat has been sown — 

Harvests have grown — 

On coaches now, gay coats of arms are borne 
By some who hardly had a cent before — 
Silk gowns, instead of homespun, now are seen, 
Instead of native straw, the Leghorn hat, 
And, Sir, ’tis true 

(Twixt me and you) 

That some have grown prodigious fat, ' 

And some prodigious lean.’ ? 


This press crusade against Hamilton was carried on along with 
much laudation of Jefferson, inspired by the report of his decision 
to retire from the Cabinet. ‘Mirabeau’ heard with distress that 
‘the leader of democracy’ wished to ‘seek the peaceful shades’ to 
‘solace himself with his favorite philosophy.’ True, the sea had 
been made tempestuous for him, but ‘the crew are his friends, and 
notwithstanding the endeavors of the officers to raise a mutiny to 
supercede him... his honest labor and firmness has frustrated 
their wicked intentions and he rides triumphant.’ But with his 
retirement ‘monarchy and aristocracy would inundate the coun- 


1 National Gazette, January 9, 1793, from Boston Argus. 
§ Jbid., January 12, 1793. re 


HAMILTON’S BLACK WINTER 197 


try.’! Right, agreed ‘Gracchus,’ ‘for though he has been in office 
near four years he has never assumed the insolence of it. His de- 
partment has been that of a Republican and in no one action or 
expression has he manifested a superiority over his fellow citi- 
zens.’ * 

Hamilton and his followers had frankly sought to drive Jeffer- 
son from the Cabinet and failed; the plan was now complete for 
driving Hamilton himself into private life. 


VI 

On January 23d, the result of the deliberations of Jefferson, 
Madison, and Giles appeared when the latter rose in the House to 
present a set of resolutions calling upon the President to submit 
complete reports on the fiscal operations of the Government. To 
these the House was clearly entitled. Nor was there anything 
violent or outrageous in Giles’s speech in which he explained them. 
The House had been legislating for four years ‘without competent 
official knowledge of the state of the Treasury or revenue.’ They 
had ‘engaged in the most important fiscal arrangements,’ and had 
‘authorized a loan of the Bank ... for more than $500,000 when 
probably a greater sum of public money was deposited in the 
Bank.’ They were now on the point of authorizing a further loan 
of $2,000,000 in the dark — and they were entitled to light. ‘I 
conceive that it is now time for this information to be laid before 
the House.’* No one rose to object and the resolutions were 
adopted. 

To Hamilton, who looked upon Congress as a meddlesome 
body, they appeared as something more than a bore. They were 
an imposition and an insult. He was entrusted with the financial 
arrangements, and all he asked was to be let alone. But he realized 
that such a lofty tone could not be publicly assumed. Suppressing 
his indignation, he set to work with meticulous care to prepare the 
fullest possible reports before the expiration of the congressional 
session. His enemies thought to burden him with a task that 
could not be performed in so short a time. Their strategy was to 
let the resolutions with their implications seep in on the minds of 


1 National Gazette, January 12, 1793, from Boston Argus. 
4 Jbid., January 16, 1793. 3 Annals, January 23, 1793. 


198 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


the people throughout the ensuing summer; his cue was to thwart 
them in that purpose, to achieve the impossible, to meet the re- 
solutions during the session, and win a triumph. 

Not for him, that winter, the gala nights at the new Chestnut 
Street Theater, nor the dinners at the Binghams’, nor the dances 
at the Stewarts’, nor the felicities of the hearth with Eliza at his 
side. His place was at the Pemberton mansion, day and night, 
until the work was done. Oliver Wolcott and the clerks were 
doomed to the same drudgery. Far into the night the lights 
gleamed in the windows of the old house, and dark and deserted 
were the streets when the workers made their way to their various 
homes after dreary hours of poring over figures, assembling facts, 
and writing explanations. 

Within twelve days, the first report, with elaborate tables con- 
taining the most minute details of transactions, was sent to the 
House. Two days later, the second report was done and in. A 
week more and the third was sent. Another six days, and the last 
was finished. The intense application, the late hours, the nervous 
strain, told perceptibly on Hamilton, who was never robust. The 
color left his cheeks when they were not flushed with excitement. 
His nights were all but sleepless. His waning strength was sus- 
tained by the driving force of his powerful mind. When it was 
over, even Wolcott found that his routine business had fallen 
behind and that he would ‘be busy for some time to bring it up.’ 
To his father he apologized for failure to answer letters. There 
was no time for letters. ‘The winter... has required every ex- 
ertion which I could make.’ } 

As these voluminous reports poured in upon the House in rapid 
succession, the Jeffersonians were amazed and the Hamiltonians 
beside themselves with joy. A startling intellectual feat, to be 
sure. ‘I can recall nothing from the British Minister in all the 
conflicts of party equal to it,’ wrote one admirer. “Even Neckar’s 
boasted account of the finances of France. . . is inferior, although 
that was the result of long study and elaborate preparation, and 
Hamilton’s the work of a moment. Poor fellow, if he has slept 
much these last three weeks I congratulate him upon it.’? Wonder- 
ful reports, agreed the ‘Centinel’ of Boston. ‘The manly unequiv- 

1 Gibbs, 1, 89. 2 Gazette of the United States, March 9, 1793. 


HAMILTON’S BLACK WINTER 199 


ocable sentiments — the fair and accurate statements, and the 
judicious arrangements... must fix his character as a Patriot, a 
statesman, and an able and honest financier.’ ! Yes, added another, 
‘he will come forth pure gold.’ ? 

But his enemies were not so much delighted. They read and 
studied the reports, complaining that the wizard of the speculators 
was up to his old tricks. A maze of words, interminable sophistries, 
columns of confusing figures, arguments instead of facts, and 
special pleading — no one could understand these reports — such 
the verdict of the rank and file. To which the Hamiltonians re- 
sponded with a sneering verse: 


*The Secretary makes reports 
When’er the House commands him: 
But for their lives, some members say, 
They cannot understand him. 
In such a puzzling case as this 
What can a mortal do? 
*Tis hard for ONE to find REPORTS 


And understanding too.’ 


But the leaders among the Jeffersonians were studying the re- 
ports and finding a few things that they could understand. Evy- 
idence of corruption they did not find, but they found technical 
violations of the law, an indifference on Hamilton’s part to the 
clear intent of Congress in making appropriations — quite enough, 
as they thought, on which to continue the attack. Again Giles and 
Madison sat with Jefferson in his home going over the reports, and 
framing the second set of resolutions with which it was hoped to 
drive their enemy from the Cabinet. 


VII 


Three days before the end of the session, Giles presented his 
famous resolutions in condemnation of Hamilton’s official con- 
duct, based on the disclosures in his reports. It does not matter 
who originally wrote them. A scholarly historian * has produced 


proof of the part played by Jefferson. In the very nature of things 
1 Centinel, February 20, 1793. 2 Ibid., February 16, 1793. 


* Gazette of the United States, February 23, 1793. 
* Paul Leicester Ford, The Nation, September 5, 1895, 


200 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


he must have had a part. Madison unquestionably made sug- 
gestions and possibly revamped the copy produced by Jefferson. 
Giles presented them, and they embodied the conclusions of the 
three outstanding leaders of the opposition. 

These resolutions, intemperately denounced from the day of 
their appearance, set forth some novel theories, in view of the 
manner in which the Treasury had been administered, but, read 
in the light of the present regulations in the matter of appropria- 
tions, they are scarcely remarkable and not in the least vicious. 
They set forth that ‘laws making specific appropriations of money 
should be strictly observed by the administrator of the finances’; 
that a violation of this rule was tantamount to a violation of the 
Constitution; and charged that Hamilton had violated the law 
passed August 4, 1790, making appropriations of certain moneys 
authorized to be borrowed in the following particulars, viz.: 

First, by applying a certain amount of the principal borrowed 
to the payment of interest falling due upon that principal, which 
was not authorized by that or any other law. 

Secondly, by drawing part of the same moneys into the United 
States without the instruction of the President. 

They charged him with deviating from the President’s instruc- 
tions, with neglecting an ‘essential duty’ in failing to give Con- 
gress official information of his proceedings in the transactions of 
the foreign loans. More to the point, politically, was the charge 
that he ‘did not consult the public interest in negotiating a loan 
with the Bank of the United States, and drawing therefrom 
$400,000 at five per cent per annum, when a greater sum of 
public money was deposited in various banks at the respective 
periods of making the respective drafts.’ In conclusion, it was 
provided that a copy of the resolutions should be transmitted to 
Washington. 

The main thing proved by the investigation was something 
that required no proof — that Hamilton had been managing the 
finances in the spirit of an autocrat, a little contemptuous of the 
rights of Congress, a little indifferent to the specific terms of the 
appropriations. These he had not hesitated to juggle to suit his 
own purposes. In so doing he had been guilty of technical viola- 
tions of the law, but he had committed no crime. His hands were 


HAMILTON’S BLACK WINTER 201 


elean. Yet money intended for France had not been paid, and 
money not intended for the Bank had gone into its vaults. This 
was enough. Suspicion did the rest. 

The most censurable feature of the attack was the introduction 
of the resolutions on the eve of adjournment. Jefferson, Madison, 
and Giles had no idea that they would or could be disposed of be- 
fore Congress should automatically expire. Copies had gone to 
the papers of the four corners to be read by the people, and it is 
probable that it was the intent that they should have the summer 
and autumn to make their impression on the public mind. It was 
manifestly an unfair advantage. But the Hamiltonians had no 
thought of permitting any such delay. They were in a majority 
in the House. In the Pemberton house, by candlelight, the 
Treasury clan was summoned to a council of war, and they went 
forth to force the fighting to a speedy finish. 

The reports had settled nothing with Hamilton’s enemies. 
‘When Catullus! invited America to look through the windows of 
his breast and judge of the purity of his political motives, he did 
not invite in vain,’ exulted ‘Decius’ in the ‘National Gazette.’ ? 
Willing to meet his accusers? sneered ‘Franklin.’ ‘Pardon me, sir, 
+f Lam one of those unbelievers, who, placing no confidence in any 
of your professions, do verily think that you neither wish, desire 
nor dare to meet full and fair inquiry. Have you asked it, sir?’ ® 
These jeers and exultant cries were intolerable. The vindication 
of the House must come speedily. 

On the last day of February there was a preliminary skirmish, 
and on March Ist, the contending armies were marshaled for a 
decisive struggle. Sedgwick and the faithful Smith of South 
Carolina led off for Hamilton, and Giles followed for the Resolu- 
tions. Fitzsimons of Philadelphia and Laurance of New York 
City, both representatives of the commercial interests, attacked, 
and Mercer of Maryland replied. Boudinot defended Hamilton, 
and Madison rose to make the premier argument in condemnation 
of the policies of the Treasury; and Ames, the most brilliant of the 
Hamiltonian orators, who had been held in reserve for Madison, 
replied. Thus the day wore on, darkness fell, and the candles had 
long been lighted before the House adjourned for dinner. Seven 

1 Hamilton. 2 February 20, 1793. 8 National Gazette, February 27, 1793. 


. 202 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


o'clock found the galleries packed, Senators upon the floor, favored 
spectators in the rear of the Chamber packed in close. The leading 
drawing-rooms were dark that night, for their mistresses looked 
down upon the drama of the black eyes and bloody noses. The 
struggle continued far into the night. 

Here let us pause to catch the drift of the speeches. The sup- 
porters of Hamilton made the most of the failure to find any ev- 
idence of criminality. ‘They present nothing that involves self- 
interest or pecuniary considerations....Instead of anything 
being detected that would disgrace Pandemonium, nothing... 
which would sully the purest angel in Heaven.’ Thus spoke Smith. 
No longer ‘the foul stain of peculation,’ but ‘the milder coloring of 
an illegal exercise of discretion and a want of politeness in the 
Secretary of the Treasury,’ said Barnwell.! What if a critical 
examination had revealed a deviation from the letter of the law, 
exclaimed Laurance. Was that an excuse for sounding ‘the alarm 
from St. Croix to St. Mary’s?’ No corruption! cried Mercer, who 
had been forced to deny campaign charges he had made. ‘J still 
entertain the opinion that there is corruption.’ The House was in 
turmoil, and the Marylander was sharply called to order. On he 
plunged, recklessly fighting his way against calls to order. 

No charge of corruption stained the lips of Madison, who 
moved on solid ground. There had been a technical violation of 
the law, and he proved it. There had been a disregard of the in- 
structions of the President, and he showed it. He went thus far, 
no farther, and he hammered home the facts. ‘I will not deny,’ 
he said, ‘that there may be emergencies in the course of human 
affairs of so extraordinary and pressing a nature as to absolve the 
Executive from an inflexible conformity to the injunctions of the 
law. It is, nevertheless, as essential to remember... that in all 
such cases the necessity should be palpable; that the Executive 
sanction should flow from the supreme source; and that the first 
opportunity should be seized for communicating to the Legis- 
lature the measures pursued, with the reasons of the necessity for 
them. This early communication is equally enforced by both 
prudence and duty. It is the best evidence of the motives for as- 
suming the extraordinary power; it is a respect manifestly due to 

1 Of South Carolina. 


HAMILTON’S BLACK WINTER 203 


the Legislative authority.’ On this ground he stood, and there 
stood Giles. 

The charges were dismissed by Ames, ex-cathedra-wise, with a 
shrug. What if there had been a juggling of the funds? ‘It is im- 
possible,’ he said unblushingly, ‘to keep different funds, diifer- 
ently appropriated, so inviolably separated as that one may not 
be used for the object of the other.’ Nothing criminal had been 
proved.! 

One by one the resolutions were taken up and overwhelmingly 
voted down — voted down even where Hamilton had admitted 
the charge and justified his acts. Before the last vote was reached, 
many of the members, worn by the excitement, the confinement, 
and fatigue, and confident of the result, deserted their posts and 
wandered forth into the winter night.? 


Vill 


Hamilton had sought, through his anonymous letters, to drive 
Jefferson from the Cabinet — and failed. Jefferson had tried, 
through this investigation, to drive Hamilton from public life — 
and failed. The struggle must go on. Each had caused the other 
some distress, each drawn a little blood, but neither had inflicted 
a serious wound. 

With the adjournment of Congress, the skirmishing was taken 
up all over the country through the press. The Boston Federalists 
opened fire upon the “Boston Argus.’ It had published the resolu- 
tions, but not the Hamilton reports. The resolutions had been 
carried on the same mail that conveyed the vote of vindication, 
and the defeat of Giles had not been mentioned. Infamous! 
‘Marat’ proposed satirical resolutions declaring ‘highly repre- 
hensible’ every official ‘who by integrity, talents, and important 
services... conciliates the esteem and affections of the people.’ ‘ 
_ Hamilton had come out pure gold, wrote a Philadelphian to a 
citizen of Rhode Island. ‘The more it is rubbed, the more it will 
shine. > A writer in the ‘Connecticut Gazette’ was moved to a 
frenzy of indignation. “Dutch Republicans murdered De Witt 


1 Annals, February 27, March 1, 1793. 2 (entinel, March 13, 1793. 
3 Gazeite of the United Siates, March 23, 1793. 6 Jbid., March 20, 1793, 
§ Centinel, March 20, 1793. 


204 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


and ate his heart. Republicans banished Aristides, the first, and 
condemned Socrates to Hemlock. And yet we have confined the 
punishment of eminent services and ability to attempts to de- 
grade them from office by innuendoes, electioneering slanders, and 
newspaper detraction. This however may be the prelude to eating 
and banishing.’! A traveler in the Southern States wrote of the 
effect of the investigation in Virginia. It had ‘opened the eyes of 
many who have hitherto been under the explicit direction of a cer- 
tain would-be umpire of the United States.’? He found that pre- 
judice had been created against Hamilton on the ground that he 
‘had not done as much as he ought to assist certain needy men to 
their claims for services,’ but he was pleased to find that ‘the un- 
just prejudice against the industrious patriot is decreasing daily.’ 8 

Everything possible was done to make Hamilton’s vindication 
a veritable triumph. When the Providence Society of New York 
met at Haut’s Tavern for a dinner, the toast, ‘The Secretary of 
the Treasury — may his distinguished talents and integrity com- 
mand universal respect,’ was received with shouts and the click- 
ing of glasses. 

But the Jeffersonians were unimpressed. ‘After all,’ they said, 
Hamilton ‘acknowledges the freedom taken with appropriations 
and strives to work out an apology, rather than a justification.’ 4 
A week later, the ‘National Gazette’ presented an analysis of the 
vote of which the Jeffersonians were to make much. Vindication, 
indeed! — and by whom? Three were directors of Hamilton’s 
National Bank. Fifteen or twenty were reputed to be stockholders 
in the same institution. ‘Can these men be admitted as judges — 
men who in fact are parties to the cause?’® All over the land the 
Jeffersonians were making it uncomfortable for many members 
who had voted to vindicate, and the Kentuckians soon had 
Christopher Greenup begging for a suspension of judgment until 
he could explain.® ‘Vindicated!’ cried the Hamiltonians. ‘Yes, 
and by whom?’ answered the Jeffersonians. ‘By Bank directors, 
by Bank stockholders who profited, by congressional speculators 
in the funds. ’ 


1 Centinel, March 21, 1793 2 Jefferson. 

* New York Daily Advertiser, April 6, 1793. 

* National Gazette, March 20, 1793; ‘Franklin.’ 5 Tbid., March 27, 1793. 

* Kentucky Gazette, September 7, copied in Independent Chronicle, October 21, 1793. 


HAMILTON’S BLACK WINTER 205 


Ix 


Thus the Jeffersonians sought to explain their defeat and even 
turn it to account. The master mind among them expressed no 
surprise at the result. He drew up a list of the members who had 
voted the vindication, indicating which owned Bank stock and 
which speculated in the funds. When Jefferson journeyed back 
to renew his strength and courage on his beloved hill, others of his 
party followed. A little later there was a movement of the leaders 
to the country home of John Taylor of Caroline at Port Royal, 
Virginia, where the conferences were continued. Thither went 
Giles, Senator Hawkins of North Carolina, and Nathaniel Macon. 
The master of Port Royal was a remarkable character, an ardent 
Republican, an earnest champion of the agricultural interests, a ro- 
bust, original thinker with something of the political philosopher, 
an able writer, a dignified though reluctant Senator. His mind ran 
much in the same groove with Jefferson’s and Madison’s, both of 
whom were anxious to enlist him more actively in their fight. 

Just what occurred at the conferences that summer is not known. 
A few months later, however, the probable fruit of the discus- 
sions appeared in Philadelphia in the publication of a startling 
pamphlet, ‘An Examination of the Late Proceedings of Congress 
Respecting the Official Conduct of the Secretary of the Treasury.’ 
Here in an analysis of the vote the charge that interested parties 
had furnished the majority was not only made, but names were 
given. Of the thirty-five supporters of Hamilton, twenty-one were 
set down as stockholders or dealers in the funds, and three as Bank 
directors. Referring to the fervent declaration of Smith of Charles- 
ton that Hamilton was as free from taint ‘as the purest angel in 
Heaven,’ the author of the pamphlet commented that ‘it is well 
known that [Smith] holds between three and four hundred shares 
in the Bank of the United States, and has obtained discounts, ad 
libitum.’ As for Hamilton’s reports, they contained vindications 
of his conduct ‘in certain particulars relative to which no charge 
had been brought forward.’ His explanation of the shuffling of 
appropriations was unimpressive. A deficiency in the appropria- 
tion? ‘In such event it becomes his duty to state the fact simply 
and correctly to the Legislature, that they might, in turn, furnish 


206 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON: 


fresh and additional funds.? Hamilton had done nothing of the 
sort. He had treated the House with contempt and violated the 
law. , 

Here was clearly the answer of the Jeffersonians to the vote of 
the House. It found its way to every city, town, and hamlet, to 
the cabin in the Kentucky clearing, to the mansion of the master 
of many slaves on the river James, to the pioneers about Fort Pitt 
on the far frontier. John Taylor of Caroline had struck his blow.’ 

Thus the congressional battle merely served to accentuate the 
differences of the parties. It marked, in great measure, the close 
of the purely fiscal phase of the struggle. Neither Jefferson nor 
Madison was qualified to cross swords with Hamilton in the field 
of finance. Giles was hopelessly inadequate. A little later, a 
Jeffersonian leader was to join them whose genius as a financier 
would be as far above all the Federalists, save Hamilton alone, as 
Hamilton was superior to Giles, but he was still waiting in the 
wings for Fate to give the cue for his appearance. 

Even as Taylor wrote, a new issue had appeared, made to order 
for the purposes of Jefferson. 

“tAn original copy is in New York Public Library. 


CHAPTER X 
CA IRA 
I 


P to this time Jefferson had been fighting under a disad- 

vantage. In the field of finance he was unable to cope on 
equal terms with his great protagonist. The mass of the people 
were not consciously concerned with the Hamiltonian policies, few 
comparatively had been swindled by the speculators, and, while 
they resented their neighbors’ sudden acquisition of wealth, it was 
not easy to capitalize their discontent. 

Then the French Revolution entered a more dramatic stage, 
captivating the imagination of the multitude. As the real signifi- 
cance of the struggle began to take form, with the crowned heads 
of the Old World marching in serried ranks under the leadership 
of Brunswick on the French frontier, the excitement was electric; 
and when they were turned back by the gallant resistance of the 
Revolutionists the floodgates of enthusiasm broke. One pro- 
longed, triumphant shout went up from the masses. The ‘people 
of no particular importance’ somehow felt that the victory was 
theirs. They had been a little indifferent, these men of the shops, 
taverns, wharves, and the frontier, over the disputed financial and 
economic policies of their country, but they could understand the 
meaning of ‘liberty, equality, fraternity.’ It meant democracy. 
Thus the news of the French victories shook the bells in the New 
York steeples, Tammany celebrated with song, shout, and speech 
in her wigwam, and the bung was knocked out of the barrel of il- 
literate oratory in the beer saloons. These ‘people of no impor- 
tance’ had been inarticulate, and they were moved to eloquence. 
They had found a cause they believed their cause — the cause of 
the people against privilege. The enthusiasm swept over the 
country, and the scenes of riotous joy at Mr. Grant’s fountain 
tavern in Baltimore? were imitated at Plymouth, Princeton, Fred- 
ericksburg, Norfolk, Savannah, Charleston, Boston, Philadelphia. 

1 Centinel, January 9, 1793. 3 National Gazetie, December 26, 1792, 


208 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


In Boston there was a salute of cannon at the castle, and a pic- 
turesque procession moved, fluttering French and American flags, 
bearing a roasted ox of a thousand weight for the barbecue and a 
hogshead of punch to wash it down, while girls and women waved 
from the windows, boys shouted from the roofs, and the frenzied 
throng roared approval to the eloquence of Charles Jarvis, the 
Jeffersonian leader, and to the Revolutionary poem by ‘Citizen’ 
Joseph Croswell.! The cheers of Boston were echoed back from 
Charleston, where the artillery boomed in the day, mingling 
its thunder with the bells of Saint Michael’s. Only ‘the pen of a 
Burke could describe the scene on State Street’ packed with ex- 
ultant humanity, with men looking down from the chimney-tops, 
while ‘bevies of amiable and beautiful women’ blessed the march- 
ers with their smiles from the balconies of the houses.? On to 
Saint Philip’s tramped the crowd for religious exercises, for these 
men were not anarchists or criminals, but decent citizens, moved 
to the depths by the defeat of the persecutors of France.’ 

And observing the unprecedented enthusiasm from his quiet 
corner, Thomas Jefferson rejoiced. At length the masses were 
politically awake, and the enemies of democracy had their answer. 


II 


The issues precipitated by the French Revolution had every- 
thing to do with American politics — inevitably so. There were 
sentimental reasons for the popular enthusiasm for the nation that 
had served America with men and money; and there were economic 
reasons for the opposition in the fact that the great merchants 
operated on English credit. But the political significance of the 
divisions soon to appear have been persistently written down, 
where they should be written up. 

With some exceptions the Hamiltonian leaders were hostile to 
the purposes of the French Revolution from the beginning. Here 
was a rising of the people with a claim to power, and the keynote 
of Federalist policies was distrust of the people; here was defiance 
of ‘authority,’ and they were sticklers for constituted authority; 
here was a challenging of privilege, and they honestly believed in 
privilege; here was democracy, and they hated it. They were 

1 Centinel, January 26, 1793. 2 Ibid., January 30, 1793. 3 Hazen, 165-69. 


CA IRA 209 


against it, just as Burke was against-it, because it was an icono- 
clastic movement, a trampling on tradition. The death of the 
King, the slaughtering by the guillotine, the stupidity and infamy 
of Genét, the intemperance of the American ‘Jacobin clubs,’ the 
defiance of Washington’s proclamation — on these they were to 
seize to neutralize or destroy the popularity of the Revolution, 
but it was the proclaimed principles of the Revolution that they 
hated. 

In the Senate, where the Hamiltonians were dominant, this was 
evident from the beginning. As early as December, 1790, when 
the resolutions of condolence adopted by the National Assembly 
on the death of Franklin were submitted to the Senate, Adams, 
in reading the letter from the President of that body which 
accompanied them, referred sarcastically to the writer’s titles, 
apropos of the action of the Assembly in abolishing titles of no- 
bility.t A few weeks later Oliver Ellsworth and Rufus King, the 
ablest Federalists inthe Senate, openly denounced the French, and 
ridiculed their claims upon American gratitude, and when Mac- 
lay made indignant protest, Ellsworth, taking snuff, pretended 
not to hear, Adams talked audibly with Otis the secretary, and 
other Senators gathered in groups to talk aloud. As early as 
February, 1791, the Hamiltonians in the Senate were in no mood 
to listen to a defense of France. Even the concession of a con- 
stitution by Louis XVI was resented by the senatorial fathers of 
the Federalist persuasion. The more democratic House adopted 
a reply praising ‘the wisdom and magnanimity’ shown in its 
formation and acceptance, but when it reached the Senate, 
George Cabot objected to the word ‘magnanimity,’ Ellsworth sup- 
ported him, the Federalists voted accordingly, and it was stricken 
out. ‘Too many Frenchmen, like too many Americans, panting 
for equality of persons and property,’ grumbled Adams as early as 
April, 1790.3 ‘We differed in opinion on the French Revolution,’ 
wrote Adams in retrospect to Jefferson many years later.‘ Adams 
and Hamilton, King and Ellsworth, Cabot and Ames, Jay and 
Bingham, looked with mingled cynicism and alarm upon the 


1 Maclay, December 10, 1790. 
2 Ibid., February 26, 1791; Brown, Ellsworth, 212. 
8 Adams, Works, 1x, 563-64. 4 [bid., x, 12-13. 


210 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Revolution from the moment it began to take on a popular char- 
acter and to aim at the destruction of privilege. 

Jefferson was just as ardent in its support. He knew the miser- 
able state to which the feudalistic institutions of the Bourbons had 
reduced the masses of the people. He had seen justice bought and 
sold in France on the auction block, the operations of the hideous 
game laws that threw open the peasants’ fields to the trampling 
of the horses of the aristocracy, the bestial poverty of the poor, 
the insulting of their wives and the debauching of their daughters, 
with justice open-eyed and leering. He knew the wantonness of 
Versailles, the drunkenness of the King, the profligacy of the 
Queen, and he had no illusions as to the dignity of the law or 
the righteousness of the authority in France. He had sat at the 
table with some of the noblest minds in that country planning 
the regeneration of a society that was rotten to the core. 

But, more important to him, he was persuaded that the fate of 
the American experiment was bound up with the success of the 
French Revolution. From this opinion he was never to deviate one 
hair’s breadth. In January, 1792, he had instructed the American 
Minister in Paris that, if circumstances forced an expression as to 
the French Government, it should be ‘in conformity with the 
sentiments of the great mass of our countrymen, who, having first 
in modern times taken the ground of government founded on 
the will of the people, cannot but be delighted at seeing so dis- 
tinguished . .. a nation arrive on the same ground and plant their 
standard by our side.’? A little later he reminded the American 
Minister in London that ‘we certainly cannot deny to other na- 
tions that principle whereon our government is founded, that 
every nation has a right to govern itself internally under what 
forms it pleases, and to change these forms at its own will.’ ® 

Thus, Jefferson was insympathy with the purposes of the French 
Revolution, and the Hamiltonians were hostile. To Jefferson it 
meant republicanism, democracy, the end of privilege — and he 
wished it well; to the Hamiltonians it meant. democracy — and 
they wished it ill. When the despots of Europe combined to 
crush it and force a degenerate king and court on the bowed backs 


1 Works (to George Mason), 111, 123-25; (to Edward Rutledge), y111, 232-34. 
2 Ibid., 290-94. 3 [bid., 1x, 6-8. 


CA IRA cB 


of the people, Jefferson’s heart was with the untrained boys rush- 
ing to the defense of the frontiers; the heart of the Hamiltonians 
was with the combination of the kings. And because the masses 
of the American people were in sympathy with the French, Jeffer- 
son rode on the crest of the wave in the closing days of 1792. 


III 


With the execution of the King, the political enemies of the 
Revolution, simulating shock, ventured into the open. Fenno 
eagerly seized upon the more graphic stories of the execution in the 
London papers and published them in full, and soon he was print- 
ing sympathetic poems on the event.’ But the friends of the 
Revolution were not easily moved to compassion, and one of the 
theaters in Philadelphia revived the play ‘Cato’ to the noisy 
acclaim of frenzied partisans. The actors appeared before the 
curtain to sing ‘La Marseillaise,’ and the audience rose to join 
lustily in the chorus. Night after night this was repeated. The 
Pittsburgh ‘Gazette’ published a brutal pzean under the caption, 
‘Louis Capet has lost his Caput,’ and this was copied throughout 
the country.? But these more savage bursts of glee did not meet 
with general approval, for when the news of Louis’s fate reached 
Providence the people ‘fell into an immediate state of dejection, 
and in the evening all the bells of the churches tolled.’ * Many put 
on mourning, and ‘Cordelia’ announced her purpose to wear, in 
mourning for the martyred King, a black rose near the left breast, 
and ‘entreated her dearly beloved sisters... to follow her ex- 
ample.’ 4 For a time the reaction was so pronounced as to threaten 
the popularity of the Revolution, and it seemed that half the Na- 
tion had turned monarchists overnight. 

The Democrats were infuriated to find that the reaction was not 
confined to the fashionable houses, but extended to the people in 
the streets. Even from New Bedford came the protest that ‘the 
advocates of monarchy’ and ‘crocodile humanity defenders’ were 
insisting that ‘the succors from France... proceeded wholly from 
Louis,’ and that he had really wished Frenchmen to be free A 


1 Gazette of the United States, April 138, May 18, 1793. 

2 Jbid., April 17; National Gazette, April 20, 1793. 

3 National Gazecte, April 10, 1793. 4 Centinel, March 20, 1793. 
’ Connecticut Gazette, April 11, 1793. 


212 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


citizen of Charleston was disgusted to see how ‘the death of one 
man’ could ‘so affect the generality of the people’ of his city. 
‘They burst forth in the most vehement invectives ... against 
the whole French nation — forgetting the thousands that said 
king had directly or indirectly been the cause of their death.’ * 
An ‘Old Soldier’ in Philadelphia was shocked to find that “beer 
houses, taverns and places of public resort are filled with pane- 
gyrics upon the measures of the British administration, and our 
good allies, the French, are branded with every felonious epithet.’ ? 
And why all this fuss? Had not letters been received from one who 
had witnessed the execution with the assurance that ‘everything 
was conducted with the greatest decency,’ and had not the writer, 
traveling over France ‘found the people quiet and generally ap- 
proving of the public measures??? Thus the debate raged in 
drinking-places, on the streets, in the highways, in the counting- 
and drawing-rooms — the enemies of the principles of the Revolu- 
tion perking up and taking heart and seeming in the ascendant for 
a few days. | 

Meanwhile what of the leaders? 

The Federalists were delighted with the reaction. Jefferson 
observed that the ladies of Philadelphia ‘of the first circle are open- 
mouthed against the murder of a sovereign, and generally speak 
those sentiments which their more cautious husbands smother.’ 
Tennant, the French Minister, at length ‘openly hoisted the flag 
of monarchy by going into deep mourning for his prince,’ and dis- 
continued his visits to Jefferson, who interpreted it as ‘a necessary 
accompaniment to this pious duty.’ More significant to the keen- 
eyed politician was the observation that ‘a connection between 
him and Hamilton seems to be springing up.’ 4 Without indecent 
manifestations of pleasure over the King’s death, Jefferson found 
some satisfaction with the tendency to render ‘monarchs amen- 
able to punishment like any other criminal.’ > Madison was quite 
as unresponsive to pity. ‘If he was a traitor he ought to be pun- 
ished like any other man,’ he wrote Jefferson.’ If these clever 
politicians were not impressed with the cries of commiseration, 


1 Connecticut Gazette, April 18, 1793. 2 National Gazette, April 20, 1793. 
8 Connecticut Gazette, May 2, 1793. 
4 Jefferson’s Works (to Madison), rx, 83-35, 5 Ibid. (to unknown), rx, 44-46. 


6 Madison’s Writings, 1, 576-77. 


CA IRA 213 


it was due to their appraisement of the noise. It was the first 
plausible and safe opportunity for the enemies of French de- 
mocracy to denounce the movement they despised, and they made 
the most of it. Even so, for a few days the Hamiltonians were 
riding the crest of the wave. 

Then another sea change. 


IV 


George III had joined the Coalition of the Kings, and the fami- 
liar redcoats were marching with the rest to crush the Revolution, 
and democracy. Here was something the masses could understand 
— monarchy against republicanism, autocracy and aristocracy 
against democracy, kings against people. The plain man of ‘no 
particular importance’ looked about to see the effect. Yes, the old 
Tories who had hobnobbed with the British officers while the 
ragged Continentals walked barefoot through the snows of Valley 
Forge were partisans of England — against France. The duty of 
the patriot was clear — France against England. The cry was 
spontaneous with the masses, and rent the heavens. Even then 
we owed a debt to Lafayette. Poor imbecile Louis was forgotten, 
the guillotine faded from the view. ‘Ca Ira!’ Even the children 
of Philadelphia had learned enough French to sing ‘La Marseil- 
laise,’ and they sang it right lustily even before the windows of the 
Binghams. Did we not have a treaty with France that we had been 
glad to sign? Was not our own existence involved in the European 
struggle now? The Republic of France crushed by the allied mon- 
archs to-day — our turn to-morrow. 

And the partisans of England — who were they? The old 
American Tories, the rich merchants operating on English capital, 
the crooked speculators fawning on the money-lenders of Europe, 
the aristocrats kow-towing to the roués of a degenerate nobility 
in the homes of the moneyed aristocracy, the politicians who ex- 
cluded the poor man from the polls. 

The effect of the English declaration of war was magical. 
Again the old ‘rabble’ that precipitated the American Revolution 
poured into the streets, swarmed into the saloons, formed into 
processions and marched. And why not? England was still our 
enemy, impressing our seamen, retaining our western posts in 


Q14 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


defiance of the treaty, playing havoc with our commerce. Were 
the pioneers on the fringe of the western forests in daily danger of 
the tomahawk? England was responsible — so most of the argu- 
ment ran. Now was the time to stand up and be counted — for 
the two republics or the Coalition of the Kings. Thus the reason- 
ing, and it caught on and flashed and flamed like a conflagration 
sweeping the sun-parched grass of the plains. 

To Hamilton this new burst of frenzied friendship for the French 
was alarming. Washington was at Mount Vernon. His immediate 
presence in Philadelphia was imperatively needed. He and he 
alone could stem the rising tide. It was setting in heavily against 
the English. On April 8th, Hamilton sat at his desk writing his 
chief a confirmation of the war between England and France with 
the sly comment that ‘the whole current of commercial intelligence 
... Indicates thus far an unexceptionable conduct on the part of 
the English Government toward the vessels of the United States.’ 
This, he added, ‘is received here with very great satisfaction as 
favorable to the continuance of peace... which may be said to be 
both universal and ardent.’ 

As his pen traveled over the paper the ‘rabble’ was shouting for 
war in the streets, and Jefferson was expressing the hope that the 
English interference with our vessels would ‘not force us into war.’ 
If he could only have looked over his rival’s shoulder as he wrote! 

Washington hastened back to Philadelphia. 


Vv 


He immediately gathered his Cabinet about him for a momen- 
tous decision. Genét, young, dashing, audacious, had arrived in 
Charleston and would soon present his credentials as the Minister 
of the French Republic. He might even refer to the treaty in 
which we had pledged ourselves to guarantee the French posses- 
sions in the West Indies, and to throw open the ports of America 
to the prizes of the privateers of our ally while closing them to her 
enemies. It was a treaty we had been delighted to get, and now it 
rose to plague us — but there it was. Worse still, the people in the 
streets understood the nature of the pledge. 

It was not Hamilton’s way to concede to Jefferson a primacy 
where foreign relations were involved, and he had not been in- 


CA IRA 215 


active while awaiting the return of Washington. Jay and King had 
been consulted particularly as to the receiving of Genét. Neither 
could find any pretext for refusing to receive him; both thought 
he should be received with qualifications. Uppermost in the minds 
of all three was the treaty — the necessity of ‘evading its obliga- 
tions.! Having decided on the policy of Jefferson’s department, 
Hamilton took no chances, and prepared the list of questions to be 
submitted to the Cabinet, which Washington copied in his own 
handwriting, but Jefferson was not deceived as to the authorship? 
There were no illusions on Jefferson’s part as to his position that 
April day in the room in the Morris house. There was Hamilton, 
eager, not a little domineering, who had prepared Washington’s 
questions on which the Secretary of State had not been consulted; 
and Knox, big, pudgy, a bit flamboyant, complacent, and proud 
of his utter subserviency to Hamilton; and Randolph, with a legal- 
istic mind capable of refining away any position he might take. . 

Should Genét be received? 

Yes, said Hamilton, with qualifications. Yes, said Jefferson, 
unqualifiedly. Yes, with qualifications, said Knox, dutifully 
echoing Hamilton, and, says Jefferson, ‘acknowledging at the 
same time, like the fool he is, that he knew nothing about it.’ 3 
Randolph agreed with Jefferson. 

Let him be received, said Hamilton, with the distinct under- 
standing that we must reserve for future consideration the bind- 
ing force of the treaties. There was no proof that Louis had been 
guilty, and evidence that the republicans in France had actually 
premeditated a plan to get rid of monarchical power.‘ There was 
no proof that the execution was an act of national justice, and all 
the courts in Europe held a different view. In truth, ‘almost all 
Europe . . . seems likely to be armed . . . with the intention of re- 
storing .. . the royalty in the successor of the deceased monarch.’ ¢ 
If our treaty obligations proved disadvantageous, we should have 
the right to renounce them.’ Respect the right of a nation to 
change its form of government? Yes. Receive its ambassador? 
Yes. But to throw our weight into the scale for the new republic 


1 King’s Works (King to Hamilton), 1, 439. 

2 Anas, I, 268. 3 Anas, 1, 268. 

* Hamilton’s Works, rv, 371. 5 Jbid., 372-73. 6 Ibid., 373. 
1 [bid., 374. 


216 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


might be lacking ‘in national delicacy and decorum.’! As to our 
obligations under the treaty, there were none, for France was 
waging an offensive war. The coalition of the monarchs to crush 
the republic forced the war? Perhaps — but France made the 
first formal declaration of hostilities.? 

Jefferson approached the question from a diametrically opposite 
point of view. ‘The reception of the Minister at all,’ he said, ‘is 
an acknowledgment of the legitimacy of their government; and if 
the qualifications meditated are to deny that legitimacy, it will be 
a curious compound which is to deny and admit the same thing.’ 
The abrogation of the treaties? ‘I consider the people who con- 
stitute a society as the source of all authority in that nation,’ he 
said: ‘as free to transact their common concerns by any agents 
they think proper; to change these agents individually, or the 
organization of them in form or function whenever they please; 
that all the acts done by these agents under the authority of the 
nation, are obligatory to them and inure.to their use, and can in 
no wise be annulled or affected by any change in the form of gov- 
ernment. ... Consequently the treaties between the United States 
and France were not treaties between the United States and Louis 
Capet, but between the two nations of America and France; and 
the nations remaining in existence, though both of them have 
since changed their forms of government, the treaties are not an- 
nulled by these changes.’ * All the Cabinet agreed to a proclama- 
tion forbidding Americans from participating in the war, to the 
unqualified reception of Genét while holding the treaties in abey- 
ance, and to the issuing of a proclamation. 

With the appearance of the proclamation, the storm broke. 


VI 


This had seemed inevitable to Jefferson from the beginning. 
Madison, then in Virginia, wrote that the proclamation ‘wounds 
the national honor by seeming to disregard the stipulated duties 
to France,’ and ‘wounds the popular feeling by a seeming in- 
difference to the cause of liberty.’ 5 


1 Hamilton’s Works, rv, 385-86. 2 Tbid., 396-408. 
3 Jefferson’s Writings, 111, 226-43. 4 Jefferson’s Works, rx, 960-68.. 
* Madison’s Writings, 1, 580-83; 584. 


CA IRA o17 


The party issue was made. The Hamiltonians were sympathetic 
toward monarchical France, hostile to revolutionary France, 
friendly to England; the Jeffersonians were friendly to revolu- 
tionary France, hostile to the Bourbons, and unfriendly to the 
policy of Pitt in England. The heart of the Hamiltonians beat in 
tune to the martial steps of the Coalition of the Kings marching 
on the French frontier; that of the Jeffersonians was with the 
French peasants hurrying to defend their soil and revolution. 
And the overwhelming sentiment of the Nation was with Jef- 
ferson. 

Instantly the Democratic masses saw in the coming of Genét 
the opportunity for the manifestation of their feelings. There was 
much in the personality, appearance, and background of this 
ardent diplomat of the Gironde to explain the fervent enthusiasm 
with which he was received. Washington had been warned in ad- 
vance by Morris, the Minister to France, that he was an ‘upstart’ 
— not a bad estimate, as it turned out, but the President had 
abundant proof that all the French republicans were upstarts.* 
He was not an upstart, however, in that he did not belong in the 
great world of high politics and society. For almost half a century 
his father had been in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and his 
celebrated sister, Madame Campan, had been one of the ladies of 
Marie Antoinette, of whom he had been a prime favorite. A 
familiar figure among the fashionable young dandies of Versailles, 
he had served for a while as the secretary of one of the brothers of 
the monarch. An extraordinarily brilliant youth, he had trans- 
lated the ‘History of Eric XIV’ at the age of twelve, with his- 
torical notes of his own. Entering the diplomatic service, with the 
blessings of the Queen, he had served as attaché at the courts of 
Berlin, Vienna, London, and St. Petersburg. He spoke several 
languages with the fluency of a native. A romantic figure, this 
young man, handsome, elegant in manner, eloquent and enter- 
taining in conversation, gracious, friendly, impulsive, with the 
virtues to neutralize the vices of his years. 

If the reception he received in the aristocratic city of Charies- 
ton was enough to turn his head, it was nothing to the continuous 
ovation accorded him as he proceeded slowly on his month’s 

t Morris, Diary, 11, 26. 


218 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


journey to Philadelphia. Farmers flocked to the rough roads to 
cheer him and offer him produce at a loss. In every town he was a 
conquering hero, and everywhere he was greeted with the strains 
of ‘Ca Ira,’ and orators paid tribute to France and the principles 
of its Revolution. The ringing of bells, the shouting of the multi- 
tude wearing liberty caps and waving French flags — such the 
sights and sounds that greeted him everywhere. Nor was this 
charming young diplomat pleasing to the Democratic rabble alone. 
At Baltimore, Justice Iredell of the Supreme Court was impressed 
with his ‘fine open countenance, and pleasing unaffected man- 
ner.’' Federalist Iredell failed to find the ‘upstart’ who was so 
conspicuous to Federalist Morris. 

As the reports of the continuous ovation dribbled into Phila- 
delphia, Hamilton and the Federalists were alarmed and disgusted, 
Jefferson delighted. Here was proof that the people were sound 
in their republicanism. Better still, here were the masses making 
themselves felt in public affairs for the first time. Even better, 
they were casting aside the spirit of humility, and standing erect 
with their sovereignty under their hats. While Genét was pro- 
ceeding to the capital, Jefferson was writing joyously to Monroe 
of the ‘old spirit of ’76 rekindling the newspapers from Boston to 
Charleston’ and forcing ‘the monocrat papers... to publish the 
most furious philippics against England.’2 And Madison was 
quite as pleased. He had hoped for a reception that would make 
‘the cant of the cities’ and the ‘cold caution of the Government’ 
less offensive.® 

Meanwhile, as Genét approached, the Democrats in Phila- 
delphia, suspecting that the Government hoped ‘to prevent a 
joyiul reception,’ were determined to disappoint that hope. ‘An 
Old Soldier,’ in a stirring reminder of French services in the 
American Revolution, declared that ‘if after such recollections 
you will hesitate to weleome their ambassador, I will mourn over 
the departed virtue of my country.’ 4 

The appeal was not made in vain. Freneau and Bache in their 
papers were arousing the emotions of the people. The former was 
publishing Grey’s speech in Parliament against going to war with 


1 McRee, Iredell (to his wife), 11, 386. 2 Jefferson’s Works, rx, 75-78. 
* Madison’s Writings, 1, 578. § National Gazette, April 27, 1793. 


; 
I 


CA IRA 219 


France. ‘A shining character,’ thought the editor.1 He was also 
informing his readers that the news of our neutrality ‘gave much 
satisfaction to the English nation.’ Meanwhile, the ‘rabble,’ 
embracing such characters as Rittenhouse, Dr. Hutchinson, and 
A. J. Dallas, was making preparations. The Minister would be 
met at Gray’s Ferry, and every one who possibly could should go. 
The cannon on L’?Ambascade would roar the announcements of 
the hero’s approach early enough to permit all who wished to 
reach the Ferry in time.’ 

It was at this time that a strange rumor was floating about the 
streets, taverns, and beer-houses of the city. Count de Noailles 
had arrived in Philadelphia at nine o’clock on the night of May 
3d, commissioned as Minister by the former Princes at Coblentz, 
and at a very late hour at night had been received by Washington 
at the Morris house where the two ‘were in private conversation 
until near morning.’ The Count had arrived — every one knew it. 
What sort of treachery was this? So this was the reason the Gov- 
ernment was trying to discourage the reception to Genét.! The 
people would see to that. 

Thus, Genét was met at Gray’s Ferry by an immense throng 
with thunderous cheers — cheers that accompanied him all the 
way to the City Tavern. The streets packed, throbbing with Joy. 
Looking out over the excited multitude, Genét ‘was quite over- 
come with the affectionate joy that appeared on every face,’ ac- 
cording to a lady of Philadelphia who shared it. ‘It is true,’ she 
said, ‘that a few disaffected persons did try to check the ardor of 
the people, but they had the mortification to find all their efforts 
blasted and were obliged themselves to join the general torrent 
and affect a cordiality ... contrary to the feelings of their hearts.’ 
A truly inspiring spectacle. ‘It would be impossible, my dear, to 
give you any idea of the scene.’ > Then followed the formal wel- 
come. Resolutions were prepared at the home of Charles Biddle, 
were adopted enthusiastically at an immense meeting in the State 


1 National Gazette, April 27, 1793. 2 [bid., May 4, 1793. 

3 Ibid., May 15, 1793. 

4 Letter from Philadelphia ‘from a gentlemen in the treasury department.’ Connecticut 
Gazeite, June 27, 1793. 

* Letter from Philadelphia woman to a friend in Alexandria; Connecticul Gazette, June 20, 
1793. 


220 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


House yard — then on in a body to the City Tavern, Biddle lead- 
ing the way and setting a merry pace. Ever and anon he received 
a frantic plea from Dr. Hutchinson, ‘fat enough to act the char- 
acter of Falstaff without stuffing,’ to slow up, and with sardonic 
humor Biddle hurried on. The corpulent doctor reached the hotel 
in a state of complete exhaustion. But it was worth it. ‘Ca Ira!’ 
Long live the French Republic and damnation to its foes!!_ Then 
the dinner at O’Eller’s, the finest the city had ever seen, at four 
dollars a plate, with Genét thrilling the diners by singing the 
French fighting song, the audience roaring ‘Ca Ira,’ liberty caps 
passing around, toasts fervent and fiery. ‘What hugging and. rug- 
ging!’ grumbled a Philadelphian a quarter of a century later. 
“What addressing and caressing! What mountebanking and 
chanting with liberty caps and the other wretched trumpery of 
sans-culotte foolery!’? When Genét called on Jefferson, he was 
cordially received, but there was a drop in temperature when 
he presented his credentials to Washington, whose sober and re- 
strained manner seemed cold to the Frenchman after the recep- 
tion from the people. Worse still, he found portraits of Louis 
XVI and Marie Antoinette in the room. Enough, quite enough, 
had been done to turn the head of a stronger character than he. 
But the Philadelphia lady was right— many who hated the 
Revolution simulated enthusiasm, and one day Knox, Bingham, 
and other leading Federalists might have been seen going aboard 
L’ Ambascade with Genét to partake of a fraternal dinner. 


VII 


Thus the popular protest against neutrality between England 
and France rose in a crescendo to a scream. Be patient with Eng- 
land? scoffed a Boston writer. What, with the western posts still 
held, the Indian wars, the impressment of American sailors on the 
sea? * The country’s grievances against the English were mobilized 
and marched to the accompaniment of hisses. A resident of Pitts- 
burgh wrote an open letter to Washington against neutrality. ‘I 
doubt much whether it is the disposition of the United States to 
preserve the condition you enjoin. It may be the disposition of 


1 Biddle, Autobiography, 251. 2 Graydon, Memoirs, 381. 
? National Gazette, June 1, 1793. 4 Centinel, April 20, 1793. 


CA IRA 221 


those who draw from funds but from no one else.’! Thus en- 
couraged, ‘Veritas’ grasped his pen. ‘I am aware, sir, that some 
court satellites may have deceived you’ — not difficult to impose 
on aruler ‘particularly if so much buoyed up by official importance 
as to think it beneath his dignity to mix occasionally with the 
people.’ 2 Freneau, who began to print a series of satirical poems 
attacking Washington, sardonically sent two copies of each issue 
to his desk. The great man fumed, fretted, occasionally burst into 
rage. ‘Civic’ launched his thunderbolts against ‘incendiaries... 
who have lately outraged decency . . . by insulting Washington,’ * 
and Fenno rushed to the defense with stupid denunciations of all 
critics as anarchists and traitors. The men in the streets jeered 
their disapproval. 

Thus, the summer of 1793 was one of utter madness. Mechanics 
were reading the speeches of Mirabeau; clerks were poring over 
the reports of revolutionary chiefs; college students were finding 
Paine preferable to Virgil; and even the women were reading, with 
flushed cheeks, Barlow’s ‘Conspiracy of Kings.’ Others too il- 
literate to read were stalking the narrow streets like conquerors, 
jostling the important men of the community with intent, and 
sneering at the great. Men were equal. The people’s day had 
dawned. Down the streets swaggered the mob looking for linger- 
ing relics of royalty to tear or order down. A medallion enclosing 
a bas-relief of George III with his crown, on the eastern front of 
Christ’s Church, caught its eye. Down with it! The church 
officials did not hesitate, but tore it down. On swept the mob in 
search of other worlds to conquer. Occasionally the lower element, 
drinking itself drunk, staggered out of the beer-houses to shout 
imprecations on a government that would not war on England. 

Not wholly without provocation, these outbursts. Fenno’s ful- 
some snobbery was disgusting to people of sense, and the English 
sailors in Philadelphia did not help. When four of these jolly tars 
attacked and all but murdered a lone French sailor without a re- 
buke from the city officials, Bache’s paper warned that the friends 
of the French would ‘take signal vengeance on such infamous 
banditti. When, in New York, the aristocrats of the ‘new and 


1 National Gazette, May 15, 1793 2 Ibid., June 5, 1793. 
8 Gazette of the United States, June 8, 1793. 


222 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


elegant coffee-house’ and the exclusive Belvedere Club were 
‘swallowing potent draughts to the annihilation of liberty,’ notice 
was served that unless suppressed ‘a band of Mohawks, Oneidas, 
and Senecas will take upon themselves that necessary duty’ — for 
Tammany was the very heart of the French movement in New 
York.! ‘Ca Ira!’ The people were the masters, and even in the 
theaters they went to dictate to managers and actors. When 
Hodkinson, a favorite actor, appeared, as his réle required, in the 
uniform of a British officer, he was hissed. ‘Take it off!’ shouted 
the crowd; but when the quick-witted actor smilingly explained 
that he represented a bully, the jeers were turned to cheers.? On 
then with the play. The orchestras played ‘La Marseillaise,’ the 
galleries sang ‘Ca Ira,’ the managers shunted Shakespeare and 
Sheridan aside for ‘Tyranny Suppressed,’ ‘Louis XVI,’ and ‘The 
Demolition of the Bastile.’ In Boston, where the Federalists were 
firm, the Boston Theater continued to cater to their tastes, but 
even there the Haymarket drew the greater crowds with drama 
for the Democrats. 

Everywhere liberty caps were worn and liberty poles were 
raised, and men and women became ‘Citizen’ and ‘Citizeness,’ 
while the Federalists roared their glee to keep up courage, making 
merry in their letters and through their papers at the expense of 
the ‘citness’: 

“No citness to my name, I'll have, says Kate, 
Though Boston lads so much about it prate; 


I’ve asked its meaning, and our Tom, the clown, 
Says darn it ’t means “woman of the town.” ’ ® 


From Hartford the witty Chauncey Goodrich wrote Wolcott 
that ‘our citizenesses quite execrate their new name,’ and that 
while ‘they will have no objection to being called biped in common 
with men, if it can clearly be shown that term denotes nothing 
above the foot or ankle, but as it comes so near they are sus- 
picious of mischief.” 4 What a world! What a world ‘agog to be all 
equal to French barbers.’ 5 

Then, suddenly, these Federalists ceased to grin, when Demo- 
cratic Clubs, suggestive of those of Paris, appeared like magic 


1 Myers, Tammany Hall, 9. 2 Hazen, 249. 
* Centinel, March 16, 1793. 4 Gibbs, 1, 87. 8 Ibid. 


CA IRA 298 


everywhere, differing according to the community and character 
of their leadership. It was not riff-raff in Philadelphia where 
David Rittenhouse was president, but it was sinister enough with 
its bold assertion that free men should ‘regard with attention and 
discuss without fear the conduct of public servants.’? That at 
Norfolk summoned patriots to a courageous expression of their 
sentiments in answer to ‘the tyrants of the world’ united ‘to 
crush the infant spirit of freedom’ in France.? Strangely enough, 
they were nowhere so extreme as in Charleston where the ‘Saint 
Cecilia Society’ scorned the membership of plebeians or men in 
trade; and where Robert Goodloe Harper, fresh from the country 
and poor, rose rapidly to fame as the vice-president of the Jacobin 
Club, wearing a ‘red rouge with great grace and dignity.’ * And 
nowhere did they mean so much to the Jeffersonians as in New 
England where they were giving political importance to the 
masses. Even the Germans of Philadelphia organized to serve 
liberty and equality in their native tongue.* 

The shrieks of protest from the Federalists against these clubs 
is inexplicable to the twentieth century. Like innumerable clubs 
for public purposes to-day, they were composed of the wise and 
foolish, the vicious and virtuous, but their purpose was to discuss 
and disseminate information on public affairs. Some then, as now, 
passed asinine resolutions, but that which alarmed the Hamil- 
tonians was that they created power for the masses. Had not 
Fenno preached and preached that the masses were to be ruled 
and satisfied? The merchants should have their Chambers of 
Commerce; the financiers aud even speculators could organize to 
influence public action — but what right had the ‘man of no 
particular importance’ to interfere? 

In brief, these clubs were vicious because democratic. These 
‘demoniacal societies,’ as Wolcott preferred to call them, were 
‘nurseries of sedition’ because ‘they are formed for the avowed 
purpose of a general influence and control upon measures of gov- 
ernment.’ ® It was ‘sedition’ in those days for people of no special 
significance to hold views in opposition to the policies of their 


1 National Gazette, July 17, 1793. 2 Gazette of the United States, June 15, 1793. 
3 Thomas, Reminiscences, 1, 32. 4 National Gazette, April 13, 1793. - 
5 Gibbs (Governor Wolcott to son), 1, 179. ; 


224 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


rulers. It was the kind of sedition that Jefferson liked. From his 
home on the river he watched their organizations multiply and 
grow with a fond, hopeful interest. They were his Citizens’ Train- 
ing Camps where the army he was to lead to victory was being 
trained for political war. 


VIII 


Meanwhile, how fared neutrality on the part of England and 
France? On the part of Genét, badly enough. Week by week some 
outrage was committed; and, worse still, the young fanatic was 
persuading himself of the propriety of his actions. The cheers in 
the streets convinced him that he could defy the President and 
appeal with safety to the people. He could hear the comparatively 
few extremists because they shouted loudest. Day by day he was 
becoming more intolerable. Devoted to the cause of revolutionary 
France, Jefferson sought to curb the impetuosity of its Minister 
in the interest of the cause, but toward the latter part of June he 
was plainly worried.! 

The British were as arrogant and binutients Outrages on 
American ships and the impressment of American seamen were 
almost daily occurrences, and protests to the Government in 
London brought no response.? Ships stopped, insulted, searched; 
cargoes confiscated; seamen seized, impressed, and thrown into 
jails; until Thomas Pinckney, the American Minister in London, 
was overwhelmed with his correspondence with Newgate Jail — 
for the poor wretches there were begging him for succor he could 
not give. He was met with a courteous smile and contemptuous 
indifference.’ ® 

In American waters British as well as French were arming and 
equipping, and into American ports sailed English vessels with 
prizes taken in direct violation of the treaty with France. Then 
came the Orders in Council of June 8th ordering British ships to 
capture and take to British ports all vessels with foodstuffs de- 
stined for France. 

On the day before this Order went into effect, a goodly company 
of English sympathizers met at Richardet’s Tavern in Phila- 


1 Jefferson’s Works (to Monroe), rx, 144. 2 Ibid. (to Monroe), rx, 75-78. 
* Pinckney, Life of Pinckney, 109. 


CA IRA 225 


delphia to celebrate the birthday of George III. An elegant dinner, 
unmarred by the presence of any part of the ‘rabble,’ with a guest 
list reading like a page from a Social Register. Enthusiasm bub- 
bled, and ‘Ca Ira’ was not sung. The orchestra played ‘God Save 
the King.’ That monarch was toasted, and they toasted the Queen, 
and Hammond the British Minister, and Phineas Bond, the British 
Consul. They toasted Washington once and ‘Neutrality’ twice. 
And they brought a perfect evening to a close with another toast: 
‘The Red Coats and Wooden Walls of Old England.’! Fenno in 
the Federalist organ published a sympathetic account which was 
read with varying emotions from Mrs. Bingham’s library to the 
beer saloon on Front Street. Even the soberest began to wonder 
if neutrality was one-sided. Nowhere was neutrality appealing to 
the masses as just, wise, or fair. 

One June morning, Washington drove out of Philadelphia in a 
phaéton and pair for a fortnight’s visit home,? and six days later 
the first of a brilliant and powerful series of articles by ‘Pacificus’ 
began to run in Fenno’s paper. By the light of the candles, Hamil- 
ton was rushing into the breach with a pen that was mightier than 
a sword, 


IX 


No one doubted the identity of ‘Pacificus.’ None but the man 
in the Pemberton house was capable of such brilliancy, audacity, 
and dash in controversy. His purpose was twofold — to justify 
the Proclamation of Neutrality, and convince the people that they 
had greatly exaggerated the services of France in the Revolution. 
In the first paper he defended the constitutional right of the 
President to issue the Proclamation without a consultation with 
Congress. In the second he released the country from all treaty 
obligations on the ground that France was waging an offensive 
war. In the third he appealed to fear with the assertion that if we 
sought to serve our ally we should be forced to wage war on the 
sea against the combined fleets of the coalition. In the fifth he 
treated the claims of France on American gratitude as trivial and 
absurd.? In the sixth he paid a tribute to the stupid Louis, at- 


1 Gazette of the United States, June 8, 1793. 
2 Jefferson’s Works, rx, 144-46. 8 Hamilton’s Works, rv, 467. 


226 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


tacking the French people for executing their king. In the last he 
urged the timeliness and necessity of the Proclamation. Brilliant 
letters, mingling truth and sophistry, but readable — and they 
were read with mingled emotions. Society was enchanted, the 
‘mob’ roared, and even Jefferson, who never made the Hamil- 
tonian mistake of underestimating a foe, was concerned. 

When ‘Pacificus’ was appearing, Jefferson was summering 
under his plane trees near Philadelphia, Madison was sweltering 
in his Virginia home, wishing nothing better than a release from 
political duties. As Jefferson sat under the trees with Fenno’s 
paper before him, he instantly appreciated the necessity of a reply, 
and he ordered Madison to the task. Nothing could have been 
more distasteful to the mild little man suffering ‘a distressing 
lassitude from the excessive and continued heat of the season,’ and 
with avowed reluctance he undertook the task.! But in August, 
Madison’s replies were running in all the papers — forceful, 
spirited, rapid in reasoning, making telling points with citations 
from Hamilton’s articles in ‘The Federalist.’2 He denied the 
power of the President to declare a treaty no longer operative. 
Proof? The best —Hamilton’s Number 75 of ‘The Federalist.’ 
Challenge the right of a nation to abolish an old government and 
establish a new? Why, it ‘is the only lawful tenure by which the 
United States hold their existence as a nation.’ 

But the two sets of letters merely served to keep the discussion 
going. The papers were doing their part. ‘This discussion must 
cease,’ wrote Fenno. ‘The Government has said we must be 
neutral and the people have no right to question its wisdom.’ 
Freneau sniffed and snorted forth satirical articles on the infalli- 
bility of rulers. No writer presuming to castigate the democrats 
was spared. ‘Justice’ was pouring forth indignant eloquence 
against them. Ah, sneered Freneau — 

‘Because some pumpkin shells and lobster claws 


Thrown o’er his garden wall by Braintree’s Duke,4 

Have chanced to fall within your greedy jaws — 
Because some treasury luncheons you have gnawed 
Like rats that play upon the public store...’ 5 

1 Madison’s Writings, 1, 586; 588; 591; 593-94; letters to Jefferson. 


2 Ibid., 1, 611-45. 3 National Gazette, June 15, 1793. 
¢ Adams. 5 National Gazette, August 7, 1793. 


CA IRA 227 


The bitterness intensified with the heat of the summer. A satirical 
letter ascribed to a Tory in Philadelphia to one in London re- 
joicing over the turn American affairs had taken, went the rounds 
of the Democratic press. Washington was not spared. He ‘is well 
surrounded, well advised.’ Hamilton moved the correspondent to 
rapture — ‘that great prop of our cause, that intrepid enemy of 
liberty.” Just read the third of the ‘Pacificus’ letters ‘and judge 
...if there is anything criminal which honest Pacificus has not 
undertaken to defend.’ ! 

‘A blessed situation truly,’ exclaimed ‘Consistent Federalist,’ 
referring to the recent Orders in Council. ‘Camillus and Pacificus 
come forward and vindicate the lenity of Britain; continue to 
blast the French, and vent their spleen on the only nation that 
seems disposed to befriend us.’ 2 ‘Go on, then, Pacificus,’ wrote 
“Tronicus,’ “traduce the French nation and the combined powers 
of Europe will thank you for your assiduity.’? Soon the Demo- 
crats were grinning over the satirical announcement of the forth- 
coming book ‘collected from the immortal work of Pacificus’ on 
how to destroy free government by ‘aristocracy and despotism.’ 4 


x 


But Hamilton could afford to disregard the attacks — he had 
Genét working on his side. Never had conditions seemed so pro- 
mising to the light-headed and hot-headed young diplomat than 
on July 4th, when he had licked his chops over the opportunity to 
decline an invitation to dine with the Cincinnati on the ground 
that he would not sit down at the same table with the Viscount — 
de Noailles.> There were other celebrations in Philadelphia more 
to his taste. 

It was at this moment that the brig Litile Sarah, a French prize, 
was being rapidly converted into a privateer with the view to 
sending it to sea regardless of neutrality. Governor Mifflin sent his 
secretary, A. J. Dallas, scurrying through the midnight streets to 
Genét’s residence to order him to keep the vessel in port. The 
young fire-eater raved and ranted, and said strange things about 


1 New York Daily Advertiser, July 13, 1793. 
2 Independent Chronicle, September 12, 1793. 8 Ibid., November 11, 1793. 
4 Ibid. 5 Biddle, 253. 


228 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


appealing over the head of the President to the people. Jefferson, 
hearing of the incident, hurried in on Sunday from the country, 
listened to Genét’s cocky talk, attempted to reason with him 
without success, but left with the feeling that the ship would not 
be sent to sea before Washington’s return from Mount Vernon. 

The Cabinet met on Monday at the State House. Hamilton 
and Knox proposed establishing a battery on Mud Island and 
firing on the vessel if it sought to reach the sea. Hamilton vehe- 
mently denounced the French. Jefferson, having in mind his 
representations to England, was not at all sure that the violations 
of neutrality were on one side. He stoutly protested against any 
measure that might lead to war without a consultation with 
Washington. 3 

Three days later the Little Sarah was still in Philadelphia and 
~ Washington returned. Hamilton and Knox were instantly on his 
neck. Jefferson, ill with fever, had prepared all the papers in the 
case for the President’s use, marked them for ‘instant attention,’ 
left them on his desk, and retired to his home. Glancing at the 
papers, Washington sent a peremptory summons to Jefferson’s 
office. Learning then of his absence, a note was sent to the sick 
man’s home sizzling with indignation over Genét’s threat, and 
requiring Jefferson’s opinion on procedure ‘even before to-morrow 
morning, for the vessel may be gone.’ Jefferson kept his temper — 
unless it is betrayed in the brevity and cold dignity of the reply: 
‘T. J. is himself of opinion that whatever is aboard of her of arms, 
ammunition, or men, contrary to the rules heretofore laid down 
by the President, ought to be withdrawn.’ 

It was after this that the Little Sarah put to sea. 

The lunatic caperings of Genét had been maddening to Jeffer- 
son, who instantly sensed the inevitable reaction against his party, 
and the ease with which the sophisticated reasoning of the Federal- 
ists could confuse, in the public mind, the cause of the French 
Revolution with the insolence of its Minister. Wherever his in- 
fluence could be successfully exerted, he divorced his followers 
from the addle-brained diplomat who had become raving mad. 
To Madison he complained of the continued adherence of Fre- 
neau and Greenleaf to Genét.1 Dr. Hutchinson had informed 
. 1 Jefferson’s Works, rx, 211-15. 


CA IRA 929 


him that ‘Genét has totally overturned the republican interest 
in Philadelphia.’ Referring to the threat to appeal to the peo- 
ple over Washington’s head, he added: ‘I can assure you it is a 
fact.’ } 

Justifications for the fears of the leader under the plane trees 
were soon reaching him from Madison in Virginia, who had a plan 
afoot for the complete divorcing of Genét from the Jeffersonian 
Party and from the cause of the French Republic. He prepared 
resolutions and arranged for their adoption in various county 
meetings in Virginia. One copy was sent to Edmund Pendleton of 
Caroline; Monroe was sent with another copy to Staunton. Still 
another went to Charlottesville.2. The first of the county meetings 
to adopt the Madison Resolutions was at Caroline with Pendleton 
in the chair, and they were hurried to the newspapers throughout 
the country. They declared devotion to the Constitution, to the 
cause of peace, and to Washington, were warmly appreciative of 
the debt of gratitude to France, sympathetic toward her struggle 
for liberty, and denunciatory of the attempt to alienate the two 
republics and to drive the United States in the direction of mon- 
archy and England.? They were sent to Washington, whose reply 
must have been galling to the English party with its laudation of 
France and the republican principle of government. The Jeffer- 
sonian press gave the reply the widest possible publicity. 

Thus, through July, August, and September the two parties 
contended over the threat of Genét, each playing for advantage. 
Comparatively few extremists offered any excuse for the ruined 
Minister, who was despised by Jefferson and Madison for com- 
promising their party and the cause of France. ‘His conduct has 
been that of a madman,’ wrote Madison to Monroe.' Even the 
Democratic Clubs followed the line laid down in Madison’s 
Caroline Resolutions. 


XI 


‘Such was the inflammatory state of parties when on August Ist, 
Jefferson, Hamilton, Knox, and Randolph arrived at the Morris 

1 Je fferson’s Works, rx, 211-15. 

2 Madison’s Writings, 1, 595-96; 596-97. 

8 Tyid., 1, 599; Independent Chronicle, October 10, 1793. 

4 Independent Chronicle, October 17, 1793. 5 Madison’s Writings, 1, 601. 


230 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


house to discuss with Washington the disposition to be made of 
Genét. 

Knox was not given to finesse when his passions were involved. 
‘Send him out of the country,’ and without ceremony, he said. 
Publish all the correspondence in an appeal to the people before 
Genét could carry out his threat, urged Hamilton. For forty-five 
minutes he spoke impassionedly, attacking Genét, denouncing 
the Democratic Societies, assailing France. Jefferson, sitting in 
silence, thought it was an excellent ‘jury speech.’ 

Randolph spoke in opposition to radical measures, and the 
meeting adjourned until the morrow. 

The next day Hamilton again took the floor and spoke again for 
three quarters of an hour with unrestrained bitterness. As he sat 
down, Jefferson rose. He was not alarmed over the Democratic 
Clubs. They would die if left alone and would grow on proscrip- 
tion and persecution. Publish the facts and decisions of the Presi- 
dent on the whole foreign controversy? Those decisions had been 
reached with divisions in the Cabinet — was it desired to pro- 
claim that condition to the country? Was it desirable to injure 
our friend France with a stab, in the face of her enemies, the allied 
kings of Europe? 

It was here that Knox broke in with references to Freneau’s 
attacks on Washington. He had calculated the effect. The Presi- 
dent flew into a rage, and the meeting adjourned because of the 
turmoil and excitement.! Determined to manage his own de- 
partment, Jefferson thereupon sat down to the preparation of a 
letter to the American Minister in Paris, setting forth with scrupu- 
lous fairness and severity the antics of Genét, and asking his re- 
call. The sting to France was removed with an eloquent protesta- 
tion of friendship. Hamilton at no time drew so damning and 
effective an indictment of Genét, but all this was lost upon him 
because of the note of friendliness to France.? 

Twelve days after the first meeting, the Cabinet again sat about 
the council table in the Morris house listening to the Jeffer- 
son draft. It was so unassailable that it was unanimously ac- 
cepted — with one exception. Jefferson had referred to a possible 
conflict between the two republics as ‘liberty warring on itself.’ 

1 Anas, 1, 305-08, 3 Jefferson’s Works, rx, 180-209. | 


} 


CA IRA 231 


Hamilton moved to strike out these words, Knox parroting his 
master’s suggestion. Washington favored their retention, ex- 
pressing the conviction that France, despite her blunders, was 
fighting for liberty; but Randolph voted with Hamilton and Knox 
against Washington and Jefferson, and the words were stricken 
out.} 

In due time Genét was recalled. That episode was over. Jeffer- 
son had won his fight to prevent a rupture with France — but it 
had cost him dearly. 


XII 


As early as May, Jefferson had been able to put his finger on the 
French and English parties in this country. With the English, 
the fashionable circles, the merchants trading on English capital, 
the supporters of the Treasury, the old Tory families; with the 
French, the small merchants, the tradesmen, mechanics, farmers, 
‘and every other possible description of our citizens.’ ? There was 
no doubt in his mind as to the position of the social circles of 
Philadelphia — he was made to feel it. The men were courteous 
in his presence, and he still dined occasionally with the Binghams 
and Robert Morris, though the ladies were but chillingly polite. 
The friend of the ‘filthy democrats,’ as Mrs. Washington is said 
to have called them, was, to them, beyond the pale. Mr. Ham- 
mond, the English Minister, was such a charming man! A few of 
the French noblemen, once numbered among the dissolute loafers 
of Versailles, were to be found frequently drinking Bingham’s 
wine, paying courtly compliments to the women, and making love 
to the daughters of the house a bit clandestinely, as Mrs. Bingham 
was to find to her dismay a little later. Not a few of the social 
leaders had been ‘presented’ at court in both France and Eng- 
land, and they never recovered. Others looked forward to a 
possible presentation as the consummation of a life’s ambition. 
Kings were adorable creatures, after all, and queens were as 
‘sweet queens’ as Fanny Burney found hers, and the nobility was 
so elegant! As for the ‘people’ — were they not as the rabble who 
had cut off the head of the lovable Louis? And Jefferson was the 
enemy of kings, the idol of the rabble — and what was worse, 

§ Randall, m1, 181. 8 Jefferson’s Works, 1x, 87-89; to Madison. 


232 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


their defender. The men thought his principles askew, but the 
women knew that his heart was black. 

Thus it was fortunate that during the exciting summer of 1793, 
Jefferson could retire to the solitude of his murmuring plane trees 
and let society buzz. Even the Philadelphia streets were cold to 
him. Party feeling was running amuck. Old acquaintances pre- 
tended not to see each other as they passed. It was true every- 
where. Even Noah Webster was complaining bitterly of this 
party narrowness in New York. ‘Examine the detached clubs at 
the Coffee-House,’ he wrote, ‘there you will see persons of the 
same family associated. Go into the private families at dinner 
and on evening visits, there you will find none but people of the 
same party.’ ! 

When Jefferson remained in town after leaving his office, he 
spent more and more time in the library of the Philosophical 
Society, at the home of Dr. Rush talking books more than politics, 
or he went to the welcome shade of ‘Stenton,’ where he was always 
sure of a cordial greeting from Dr. Logan and that incomparable 
Quakeress who was his wife. To Madison he opened his heart in 
the lament that he found ‘even the rare hours of relaxation sacri- 
ficed to the society of persons .. . of whose hatreds I am conscious 
even in those moments of conviviality when the heart wishes most 
to open itself to the effusions of friendship and confidence, cut off 
from my family and friends... in short giving everything I love 
in exchange for everything I hate.’ 2? The attacks on Washington, 
which society ascribed to the influence of Jefferson, made his 
position all the more unpleasant. Articles signed ‘Democrat’, or 
‘Veritas’ foully assailing the President appeared in Federalists 
papers. The worst of these, Jefferson thought, were written by his 
enemies for the purpose of embittering decent men against his 
party. It was even whispered about that he was the author of 
the ‘Veritas’ letters, for Genét, in an attempt to impress his Gov- 
ernment with his own power, hinted that Jefferson had written 
them. The latter talked it over with Tobias Lear, the President’s 
secretary, and made an investigation of his own, concluding that 
the author was William Irvine, a clerk in the Comptroller’s office. 
‘I have long suspected this detestible game was playing by ‘he 


1 American Minerva, December 21, 1793. 2 Jefferson’s Works, rx, 117-21. 


CA IRA 233 


fiscal party to place the President on their side,’ Jefferson wrote.! 
It was manifestly absurd, but society preferred to believe it. 

Unpleasant as was the attitude of the fashionable circles, it was 
not so offensive to Jefferson as the constant quarreling and intrigu- 
ing in official circles. He complained that he and Hamilton were 
always against each other like cocks in a pit. He was never fond of 
futile disputation. His own views were fixed, as were those of his 
opponent. He was too much the philosopher to enjoy argumenta- 
tion that accomplished nothing. Long before that summer he had 
wanted to retire, and, as we have seen, had only been dissuaded 
by the importunities of Washington, but he was now intolerably 
tired of it all. Acknowledging a letter from a friend in Paris, he had 
written, in reference to the ‘oppressive scenes of business,’ that 
‘never was mortal more tired of these than I am.’ ? Three months 
earlier, he had promised his daughter Martha that the next year 
they would ‘sow [their] cabbages together.’ 

By July the situation was becoming unendurable. It was about 
this time, when he was writing his notes to Hammond, the British 
Minister, who was an intimate friend of Hamilton’s, that Oliver 
Wolcott, the mere shadow of his chief, was bitterly complaining 
of Jefferson’s ‘duplicity of character’ in treating Hammond 
harshly.? These were the notes to which John Marshall gave the 
highest praise in his ‘Life of Washington,’ but the observation of 
Wolcott reflected the tone of society. 

On July 31st, the philosopher-politician seated under his plane 
trees might have read an attack upon himself in Fenno’s paper 
charging him with crimes against his country committed in such a 
way as ‘to keep him out of reach of the law.’4 That very day he 
sat down at his desk to write his resignation. Six days later, Wash- 
ington drove out to Jefferson’s country place, and out on the lawn 
sought again to dissuade his Secretary of State from his purpose. 
But he had had enough. With some bitterness, he told the Presi- 
dent that ‘the laws of society oblige me always to move exactly in 
the circle which I know to bear me peculiar hatred... and thus 
surrounded, my words are caught up, multiplied, misconstrued, 
and even fabricated and spread abroad to my injury.’ ¢ Convinced 


1 Anas, 1, 279. 2 Domestic Life, 220. 8 Gibbs, 1, 122. 
Gazette of the United States, July 31, 1793, 4 Anas, 1, 311. 


234 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


that Jefferson was unshakable, Washington discussed, with him, 
a possible successor. He favored Madison, but feared he would 
not accept, and then asked Jefferson’s opinion of Jay and Smith, 
both rabid Hamiltonians. Jefferson asked him if he had ever 
thought of Chancellor Livingston. He had — but Hamilton was 
from New York. What did Jefferson know about Wolcott? ‘I 
have heard him characterized as a very cunning man,’ was the 
dry reply. It was finally agreed that Jefferson should remain on 
until January.! 


XIII 


August was a dreadful month in Philadelphia, a dry, deadening 
heat making the days and nights unbearable. Any one walking 
near Water Street was sickened by the fetid smells from the 
stinking wharves. Politically conditions were as depressing. The 
bitter party struggle went on. Even the heat and smells could 
not give it pause. Bache’s paper published a letter describing 
Viscount de Noailles as ‘a man who was employed by the late 
King of France to bribe the members of the Convention .. . and 
alterwards ran off with the money’; and the next day the noble- 
man, swords and pistols in his eyes, appeared to demand that the 
editor publish a denial and furnish the name of the author of the 
article. Thinking discretion the better part of valor, Bache gave 
‘Mr. Pascal, the Secretary of Genét,’ as the author and society 
expected a French duel — to be disappointed.2. Genét was hurry- 
ing off to New York to accept an ovation and the Hamiltonians 
began to lose faith in Washington, because he sat ‘with folded 
arms’ and let the Government ‘be carried on by town meetings.’ 
The Federalists were concluding that town meetings were a 
vicious influence. Meetings of Chambers of Commerce were differ- 
ent. But it was reserved for Boston to give the Federalists their 
greatest shock when at the masthead of the French frigate La Con- 
corde, appeared the names of eleven staid men of the city placarded 
as ‘aristocrats,’ and unfriendly to the French Republic. The 
charge was true, but here was something that smacked of the 
Terror in Paris. With the town seething with righteous wrath, a 


1 Anas, 1, 313. ? Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, August 4, 1793. 
§ King’s Works, 1, 492-93. 


CA IRA 235 


committee boarded the vessel and demanded the removal of the 
placard. The officers expressed surprise that it was there, apolo- 
gized, removed it. But the opportunity was too good to be lost. 
‘I wish to know what is to be their [the eleven citizens’] punish- 
ment, and who is to execute it,’ wrote ‘A Free American’ in the 
‘Centinel.’ ‘Are they to suffer by the lamp post or by the guillo- 
tine here, or are they to be sent in irons to Paris to suffer there?’ ? 
Viewing the scene, as became a Cabot, from the vantage-point of 
aristocratic aloofness, George Cabot was alarmed. He wrote King 
of his ‘amazement’ at ‘the rapid growth of Jacobin feeling.” Why 
had not the truth concerning France been told the people? Had 
she not ‘obstructed our commercial views?’ ? Had Cabot unbent 
to the reading of the ‘Independent Chronicle’ of his city he might 
have understood the cause of the ‘growth of Jacobin feeling.’ It 
fairly teemed with the French and their Revolution. “In case of 
distress whence is our succor to arise?’ it demanded. ‘Is there one 
among the combined powers contending against France on whose 
cordiality we could depend?’? Ask the soldier of our Revolution 
who helped win American independence. ‘Who were the men who 
marched in columns to the capture of Cornwallis — or whose 
navy thundered the music of that defeat?’ 4 

Then, with September, the reaper of Death stalked through 
the streets of Philadelphia. 


AIV 


It began with the filth and sickening smells of Water Street and 
spread like the deadly gas of modern battle-fields over the city. 
The poor of the congested quarters near the water-front fell like 
flies in winter. Soon it spread to the best residential sections. The 
evident inability of the physicians to cope with the disease in- 
creased the terror. Washington was ordered out of the city and 
hastened to Mount Vernon, and Knox took to precipitate flight.® 
Soon all the great houses were closed, and every one who could 
afford it abandoned his business and fled from the stricken city. 
Soon half the houses were abandoned, and they who remained 


1 August 10, 1793. 2 Lodge, Cabot, 73. 
“A Democrat,’ August 19, 1793. 4 ‘Brutus,’ August 26, 1793. 
5 Jefferson’s Works (to Madison), rx, 227. 


236 — JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


locked their doors, closed the windows, and lived in complete 
isolation as far as possible.} 

Day and night the death-carts rumbled through the town and a 
covered wagon was kept busy conveying the sick to Bush Hill 
Hospital in the country — a dismal wagon with a bed, drawn by 
a weary horse.? With half the stores closed, the upward bound in 
the cost of provisions intensified the distress of the poor.? The 
streets were as those of a dead city, no one caring to brush against 
the black robe of the grim reaper that was taking such an appalling 
harvest. One observer looking down the street one day could not 
see a single soul. Terror seized upon every one. Lifelong friends 
evaded one another like guilty creatures. Even the families of the 
stricken fled, leaving the suffering to die in barbarous neglect.5 
One man determined to remain in the city, but passing twelve 
corpses in the streets, he summoned a carriage and fled in horror.$ 
Only the negroes seemed immune, and ‘much to their honor, they 

. zealously contributed all in their power.’’ And to accentuate 
the horror, the rumble of the death-cart, the cries of the dying, 
the groans of the abandoned, were mingled with the bold footsteps 
of the robbers making their way from one deserted mansion to 
another.’ ® Panic everywhere. A toothache, and the victim was 
on the verge of collapse from fright — it was the fever.? Timothy 
Pickering had a twinge, and off he hastened to the doctor to be 
bled, put on a starvation diet, and sent on long horseback rides 
into the country ‘for pure air.’ Many died literally from fear, and 
the horror of the scenes and sounds.” 

When the death toll mounted from scores to hundreds, from 
hundreds to thousands, the neighboring villages and towns met 
to devise plans for keeping the Philadelphians away, and one of 
these threatened to receive them ‘at the point of the bayonet.’ 4 
The hospitals were packed — two hundred Irishmen in the Naval 
Hospital alone.” Meanwhile the physicians were fighting coura- 

1 Gibbs (Wolcott to Washington), 1, 112. 2 Hiltzheimer’s Diary, 195. 

* McRee, Iredell (a servant to Iredell), 11, 401; King’s Works (Wharton to King), 1, 498, 

4 Biddle, 256. 

® Pickering (to John Clark), 111, 55-58; Gibbs eet to father), 1, 110. 

* Biddle, 256. 7 Gibbs, 1, 110. 
8 McRee, Iredell (servant to Iredell), 11, 401. ® Thid., 11, 400. 
* 10 Pickering (to Clark), 111, 55-58. 


11 Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, August 27, 1793. 
2% McRee, Iredell (Duffield to Iredell), 11, 400. 


CA IRA 237 


geously, desperately, but blindly and futilely. Fisher Ames, who 
had a malicious humor, was amused at their plight and methods. 
“All vouch success — none have it,’ he wrote, ‘and like Sangrado’s 
patients they die for want of bleeding and warm water enough.’ 
One doctor treated the disease as a plague — ‘his patients died’; 
he adopted Rush’s methods — ‘they died.’ He hit upon a combi- 
nation of the methods — ‘all died.’ ! Bache filled his columns with 
cures aud suggestions, but the death-rate increased frightfully. 
It was impossible to keep a record. On October 20th, Wolcott 
wrote Washington that ‘more than four thousand persons have 
died,’ and the next day Pickering wrote him that ‘about three 
thousand have died.’ 2 As many as 517 were buried in the Potter’s 
Field between August 19th and October Ist.? 

The streets deserted, houses closed, death-like silence but for 
the rattle of burial wagons and the groans of the stricken, the tread 
of robbers in the night — the horrors deepened. No one under- 
stood the reason why —no one but Alexander Graydon, who 
thought it a grim visitation of God to purge the foul hearts of the 
Philadelphians because of their enthusiasm for French democracy. 
One of the democrats had fallen early, when Dr. Hutchinson paid 
his profession the honor of dying in the harness. One day he met a 
friend in the street and urged him to take his family and leave. 
Was the Doctor going? No, he felt it his duty to stay and serve 
the sick. Was he not afraid? Well, he thought he would probably 
fall a victim, and bade the friend farewell. A few days later he was 
dead — the greatest hero of the scourge.! 

Meanwhile, Jefferson, living in the country, thought it his duty 
to go to the city every day, and did. And then Graydon’s God 
made a blunder that must have made the angels weep — he 
struck Hamilton down with the blow that must have been in- 
tended for the Jacobin Jefferson. 

Living two miles out in the country, Hamilton was stricken 
violently. Having given thought to the disease, he had conceived 
that cold water would be effective. He summoned Dr. Stevens 
and many attendants — ‘the method being expensive’ — and 
through cold water and bark he was cured’ ‘Colonel Hamilton is 


1 Ames (to Minot), 1, 130. 2 Gibbs, 1, 112; Pickering, 111, 59. 
§ Hiltzheimer, 196. ¢ Biddle, 255. 6 Ames (to Minot), 1, 1380. 


238 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


ill of the fever but is recovering,’ Jefferson wrote Robert Morris 
who had taken to flight.! By the time the country knew of Hamil- 
ton’s peril he had recovered, and, with his family, had hastened to 
the Schuylers at Albany. 

With the approach of winter the disease receded — died out. 


xV 


Even so, there was no disposition on the part of Congress to 
meet in the gloomy city, and November found the Government 
established temporarily in Germantown. The statesmen had to 
accommodate themselves to wretched quarters. Jefferson ‘got a 
bed in the corner of a public room in a tavern,’? but it mattered 
little to him, for his time was short. As late as December 22d, 
Washington made a final effort to persuade him to remain. ‘I 
hope it will be the last set at me to continue,’ Jefferson wrote 
Martha.? 

The publication of his correspondence with both Genét and 
Hammond had raised him in the esteem of his worst enemies. No 
one then or since has pretended to the discovery of undue partiality 
in the treatment of the offenses of the two nations. In the field 
of foreign relations the papers of Jefferson during this period were 
as distinguished as those of Hamilton in the sphere of finance. 

But he was to submit to Congress a final Report on Commerce 
which was to cut short his popularity with his enemies. “The 
letting loose of the Algerines on us, which was contrived by Eng- 
land, has produced a peculiar irritation,’ he wrote his daughter. ‘I 
think Congress will indemnify themselves by high duties on all 
articles of British importation.’4 Here he was referring to his 
Report. 

In this notable document, which his party instantly adopted as 
a chart by which to steer, he laid down some broad general propo- 
sitions which called for retaliation on England. If a nation placed 
high duties on our products, we should place high duties on its 
products, even to excluding articles that came into competition 
with our own. Where a nation prohibited American merchants or 


1 Domestic Life, 219. 
2 Jefferson’s Works (to Madison), rx, 240; 253-54. 
8 Domesiic Life, 226. 4 Ibid., 226. 


CA IRA 239 


agents from residing in parts of its domain, we could retaliate with 
propriety. If it refused to receive in our vessels any products but 
our own, we could adopt a similar regulation as to theirs. If it 
declined to consider any vessel as ours not built in our territory, 
the rule could work both ways. All this was accompanied with a 
report on our relative commercial intercourse with both England 
and France. The purpose was in harmony with the policy for 
which Madison had fought from the beginning.1 

Leaving this as a legacy to his party, Jefferson prepared for his 
return to his beloved Monticello. The executive branch of the 
Government was to be turned over to the enemy, for no Jeffer- 
sonian considered Randolph, who succeeded Jefferson, as a party 
man. Better a complete separation and open opposition than a 
further pretense at an unworkable coalition of the two parties. 
And home was calling imperatively. His private affairs were in 
need of attention. His ten thousand acres had been neglected. 
His hundred and fifty-four slaves had not been properly directed. 
And there, on his serene hilltop, were his daughters, his grand- 
children, his friends the books, the trees, the view over the valley 
at sunrise. 

Bidding farewell to his friends and making ceremonious calls 
upon his foes, he set forth in his carriage for the southward on 
January 5th. He was going home. Soon the house he had planned 
on the hill would be in view, soon the negroes would be running 
down the hill road to meet the carriage, to touch his clothes, to 
kiss his hands. Soon he would be sitting at his own fireside — in 
rooms sacred to the memory of the woman for whom the house was 
built. 

1 Jefferson’s Works, 111, 261-83, 


CHAPTER XI 
HECTIC DAYS 


if 


CARCELY had Jefferson reached his quiet hilltop when 

Madison submitted the resolutions based upon his chief’s 
Commercial Report, and the English party was instantly in arms. 
These resolutions were more political than commercial and were 
clearly aimed at England in retaliation for her refusal to enter into 
a commercial treaty. The resentment against the English policy 
had been increasing rapidly, even John Quincy Adams finding the 
French ruling powers more favorable to the Western Republic 
than was the Ministry of Pitt.1 Only in the commercial centers 
was there a disposition to suffer long and be kind for business 
reasons. The Chambers of Commerce were on their toes hissing; 
the Democratic Societies shouldered arms and marched to the 
tune ‘Ca Ira.’ The galleries of the House filled. 

The Federalists met the Madison attack with a counter-charge 
from William Smith of Charleston, in an elaborate recitation pre- 
pared for his delivery by Hamilton. The Carolinian entered the 
fray with the breezy confidence born of the knowledge that a 
master mind was behind his utterances. No one was deceived. 
‘Every tittle of it is Hamilton’s except the introduction,’ Jefferson 
wrote Madison.2 The strategy of the Smith-Hamilton speech was 
to divert attention from the political to the commercial phase, by 
showing that our business relations with England were more 
valuable than those with France. The next day Madison boldly 
proclaimed the political purpose of the resolutions.’ ‘Thereafter, 
with spectators packing the galleries, and almost suffocating the 
legislators by crowding onto the floor of the chamber, the forensic 
gladiators fought with more ferocity than finesse. Ames sowed 
trouble for himself with the amazing declaration that ‘there is an 
amicable disposition on the part of Great Britain.’ * 


1J.Q. Adams, Works (letter to John Adams), 1, 183-86, 
’ Jefferson’s Works, rx, 281. 
*® Annals, January 14, 1794, 4 Jbid., January 15, 1794. 


HECTIC DAYS 241 


The English are ‘as angry at us as we are at them,’ said Dexter, 
warning of war. ‘Ridiculous!’ exclaimed Madison. ‘What would 
Britain gain by war? Would it employ her starving manufactur- 
ers’ or ‘give employment to the vessels that formerly imported 
luxuries to America?’ ! But why these strange accusations against 
England? asked Ames. What arethe specific facts? Facts? 
thundered Giles. She has ‘subjected our vessels . . . to seizure and 
search’;she ‘prevents our vessels from conveying to our friends and 
allies goods not contraband’; she is responsible for “letting loose 
the pirates of the Barbary States upon our commerce.’ ? Tracy, 
Hamiltonian, could see no advantage we had received from the 
French treaty. At any rate, added Boudinot, we should ‘not over- 
value the friendship of France.’ * What, roared Giles, ‘if a prophet 
in 1778 had foretold that in 1794 that question would have been 
triumphantly put in an American Congress... would not the 
prophecy have been deemed an imputation on the American 
character?’ 

But — blandly from Ames — what are our grievances against 
England? ‘Is it necessary,’ shouted Nicholas, Jeffersonian, ‘to 
tell the gentleman of the hostilities of the savages on the frontier, 
of the murder of our citizens, and the plunder of our settlements?’ 4 
‘Only a set of resolutions on paper,’ sneered Dayton. Is that our 
only or best weapon? Yes, answered Madison, ‘we can make use 
of none against Great Britain more effectual than commercial 
weapons.’ > 

Thus day by day the debate dragged on. ‘What recent injuries?’ 
inquired Samuel Smith of Maryland, merchant. ‘The recent 
proclamation respecting the stoppage of vessels of neutral nations, 
with all such excepted but the United States,’ hotly answered 
Madison. ‘Better accept excuses than fight battles,’ warned Ames. 
Instantly Giles, whose passions slept with one eye open, was on 
his feet protesting against the idea ‘that the mere exercise of our 
- rights as an independent government is equivalent to a declara- 
tion of war.’ 

Thus the bitterness intensified, with personalities entering the 
discussions. One day the venerable Abraham Clark of New Jersey, 


1 Annals, January 23, 1794, 2 bid, 
§ Ibid., January 24, 1794, 4 bid. § bid, 


242 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


signer of the Declaration of Independence, sat open-mouthed 
while Smith of Charleston reiterated his views, and then, tremb- 
ling with age and infirmities, declared that ‘if a stranger were to 
come into this House he would think that Britain has an agent 
here.’ Cries of ‘Order!’ ‘Order!’ Smith replied with a sneer at the 
old man’s garrulity and years. With passions at white heat, the 
debate was postponed until the first Monday in March. 

Meanwhile, out of doors the fight was being waged with spirit. 
In Boston, the ‘Centinel,’ organ of the Federalists, was making 
scurrilous attacks on Madison. He had been the counselor and 
abettor of Genét — a corrupt tool of France since the embassy of 
Gerard.! He was the agent of France,? the tool of anarchists, and 
he could have learned nothing about commerce in Virginia ‘where 
no other commerce is transacted than buying and selling of ne- 
groes.’ 4 

To these attacks the Jeffersonians responded with a call for a 
town meeting to act on the Madison Resolutions. Before a great 
crowd at the Old South Church a dramatic forensic scene was 
staged, the eloquent Jarvis leading for the Resolutions, the bril- 
liant young Harrison Gray Otis for the opposition, until darkness 
forced an adjournment till the morrow when it was renewed until 
afternoon, when the question was indefinitely postponed. Otis 
had won the only victory possible in successfully filibustering 
against a vote.’ At Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a mass meeting 
at the State House endorsed the Resolutions,® and to the astonish- 
ment of Madison a meeting was held in New York City at the 
instance of the Jeffersonians.’? In Philadelphia, with Hamilton 
looking on from the wings, the merchants met to denounce the 
Resolutions, but after a demonstration in their favor the attempt 
to get a vote upon them was abandoned.® 

But it was in Charleston that the rage of the populace over the 
pro-English utterances of Smith and Ames assumed the most 
virulent form. Men cursed them in the streets, denounced them 
in resolutions, burned them both in effigy. Bache, then the leading 
_ 4 Madison’s Writings (to Jefferson), 1, 1-5. 

2 Centinel, February 19, 1794. 8 Ibid., March 1, 1794. 

¢ Ibid., February 23, 1794. 5 Morison, Oits, 1, 53. 


8 Independent Chronicle, March 3, 1794. 
7 Madison’s Writings (to Jefferson), u, 1-5. 8 Ihid., u, 5-6. 


HECTIC DAYS | 243 


Jeffersonian editor, deprecated the burning. ‘Sorry I am to see 
these English fashions adopted by free-born Americans.’! The 
cynical Ames’s sense of humor left him unscorched by the flames. 
‘I am willing to have it believed,’ he wrote, ‘that as I come out of 
the fire undiminished in weight, I am pure gold.’ ? But it was more 
serious to Smith, for it was his constituents who consigned him to 
the fire. The publication and circulation of the speech he had not 
written had deepened the resentment. How much hotter might 
have been the flames had the mob foreseen the printing of an 
English edition with the boastful prefatory statement that it had 
driven the author of the Declaration of Independence from office!? 
Indeed, the fortunes of the fight had turned, and the Hamiltonians, 
lately jubilant over Jefferson’s embarrassment with Genét, had 
troubles of their own. Wolcott was complaining that Hammond, 
the British Minister, was ‘weak, vain and impudent,’ * and even 
Ames was alarmed because he ‘rails against the conduct of our 
Government, not ore rotundo, but with a gabble that his feelings 
render doubly unintelligible.’ > By their speeches against Madi- 
son’s Resolutions, the Federalists had inextricably entangled 
themselves with British policies, and it was the chatter of the 
streets and the gossip of the press. 


‘From tke speechification of Sedgwick and Ames 

Some might think that they both had drank deep of the Thames, 
For “‘ our dear Mother Country,’ the former stands forth 

In strains that were worthy a pupil of North.’ ® 


It was in this state of public opinion, and with Ames wailing 
that England was ‘driving us to the wall,’ that the news from the 
West Indies aroused the people to a white heat of fury and put 
them on the march. 


II 


In compliance with an Order in Council, the British had seized 
more than a hundred vessels and held them for condemnation. So 
appalling were the possibilities that even Bache made the an- 


1 Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, March 27, 28, 1794. 2 Ames, 1, 187-88, 
8 Printed in London by John Stockdale, Piccadilly. 4 Gibbs, 1, 133. 
5 Ames, 1, 1387-38, * Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, February 1, 1794, 


244 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


nouncement in terms of measured moderation.! Ames no longer 
mentioned the ‘amicable disposition’ of the British, or inquired 
with a childlike innocence what England had done to offend the 
Americans. With war seemingly inevitable, the Hamiltonians 
were driven to the simulation of a warlike mood. The spirit of 76 
burst into flames. 

Under such conditions the debate on the Madison Resolutions 
was resumed. When the sneer of Ames and Parker that they bore 
‘the French stamp’ was loudly hissed by enraged visitors in the 
galleries, the Federalists took to cover.?, Extreme provocative 
measures were introduced and pressed. The demand for the se- 
questration of British debts led to vitriolic exchanges. ‘That king 
of sea robbers!’ That ‘Leviathan which aims at swallowing up all 
that floats upon the ocean!’ Boudinot, Hamiltonian, pleaded for 
‘calmness.’ * Dexter denounced the proposal as the counsel of dis- 
nonor. ‘English tool!’ roared the raging streets. 

Then came the Non-Intercourse Act, with the Federalists, off 
their high horse, literally begging for ‘calm deliberation.’ Even 
Sedgwick was in an importunate mood; but the measure was 
pushed with all the more determination and passed with most 

£ the Hamiltonians against it.4 Even when Fitzsimons fell into 
line, he was trounced by the press with the open charge that he had 
held out until his own brig ‘had departed to our good English 
friends at Kingston... with a cargo of flour.’> Clearly the 
Hamiltonians had to conciliate the public in some way, and Sedg- 
wick came forward with a plan for an army; and Madison de- 
nounced it as ‘the old trick of turning every contingency into a 
resource for accumulating force in the government.’ ® 

Out in the streets the people were on a rampage. Phineas Bond, 
the British Consul in Philadelphia, reported to Grenville that the 
Americans even resented the Orders in Council.’ Worse still, he 
and Hammond the Minister could not even walk the streets with- 
out being subjected to ‘menaces from knots of street politicians.’ 


1 Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, March 24, 1794. 

2 Annals, February 28, 1794. 8 Ibid., March 27, 1794. 

4 Ibid., April 21, 1794. 

8 Philadelphia Datly Advertiser, April 11, 1794. 

® Madison’s Writings (to Jefferson), 1, 7-8. 

® Bond’s Letters, American Historical Association, Report, 1897, pp. 543-45. 


HECTIC DAYS 245 


The consul in Baltimore had been forced by threats of violence to 
take refuge in the capital.! 

The democrats followed up every advantage. Where was the 
spirit of "76? ‘Shall a paper system hold you in bondage?’? Eng- 
land would not dare, declared the Democratic Society of Phila- 
delphia, but for the declaration of neutrality, interpreted as ev- 
idence of American cowardice.2 And perhaps Smith of Charleston 
had given the English a wrong impression. Had he published his 
speech against the Madison Resolutions to show Americans he 
‘despises their opinion’ or ‘to prove to Great Britain that he has 
been a faithful friend?’ 4 

Under such encouragement some French sailors in American 
ports became cheeky and chesty. In a Charleston theater one of 
these having insulted a woman and been roughly handled, has- 
tened to his ship with the story of an assault by English sympathiz- 
ers. His fellows sallied forth to avenge the insult, making acces- 
sions to their ranks on the way by spreading the fictitious story 
of the incident. Armed with cutlasses, they descended on the 
theater as the people were pouring out, in an indiscriminate at- 
tack which included the wrecking of some carriages and the 
wounding of a few horses. The alarm bells were rung, and citizens 
rushed to the battle.® 

Everywhere people were steeling themselves for war. In New 
York a mass meeting, held at the Coffee-House ® was belittled 
by Noah Webster, the Hamiltonian editor. Both he and Fenne 
were clamoring for negotiations. ‘Why, to be sure, we must nego- 
tiate,’ sneered Bache. ‘... The honor, the interest, the welfare 
of the United States are locked up in the funding system.’ ’ Every- 
where citizens were helping with fortifications. In New York the 
students of Columbia (King’s) formally tendered their services,® 
the house carpenters gave their labor,® and other trades followed. 
The country boiled with excitement. The Nation was rushing into 
war. Hamilton and his associates put their heads together to 
devise a method to prevent it. 

1 Bond’s Letters, American Historical Association, Report, 1897, p. 546. 

2 Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, April 13, 1794. 3 Ibid., April 14, 1794. 

‘ Ibid., May 21, 1794. 5 Ibid., April 5, 1794. 

6 New York Journal, March 22, 1794. 


1 Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, April 9, 1794. 
8 New York Journal, May 3, 1794. 9 Ibid., May 28, 1794, 


246 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


III 


The rage of the people could be held in check only by a definite 
action looking to the righting of wrongs, and since the last thing 
the commercial interests wanted was war, the only thing left was 
negotiation. Even though this finally failed, it might postpone the 
fatal day. The Federalists, in control, instinctively turned in the 
crisis to Hamilton as the safest man to negotiate. He above all 
was interested in preserving peace with England at all costs. His 
whole political system rested on the supremacy of the commercial 
element. He was the father of the national credit and it would 
collapse without the revenue from the imposts, the greater part of 
which came from English trade. 

In the beginning no other name was considered in the Federal- 
ist conclaves for ambassador. ‘Who but Hamilton would per- 
fectly satisfy all our wishes?’ wrote Ames.’ A correspondent of 
Rufus King was writing about the same time that Hamilton’s 
selection would give general satisfaction because he had ‘the full 
confidence of the merchants and the people at large’; 7 and King 
was replying that he wished Hamilton ‘may speedily go,’ since 
‘then there would be some hope of our remaining at peace.’ 3 

In truth, Hamilton’s relations with England’s representatives in 
America had been intimate. In the days of the agency of Colonel 
Beckwith, before a Minister was accredited, an intimacy had been 
established with Hamilton so close that Professor Bemis concludes 
that never afterward was Jefferson ‘able to conduct his office with 
thorough independence.’ * That intimacy continued until the ar- 
rival of the Minister, and in the meanwhile Hamilton figured in 
the Agent’s confidential reports as ‘No. 7.’ 5 

The Minister, with more assiduity than ability, was George 
Hammond, a young man of twenty-seven, who immediately es- 
tablished similar relations with the Secretary of the Treasury. 
Soon we find him reporting to Lord Grenville that he preferred to 
make most of his communications privately to Hamilton and to 
have no relations with Jefferson that were not absolutely neces- 


1 Ames (to Gore), 1, 139. 
2 King’s Works (from Alsop), 1, 159. 8 Tbid., 1, 560. 
4 Bemis, 45. 5 Ihid., 65. 


HECTIC DAYS Q49 


sary.! It is fair to say that in every crisis he found the opportunity 
to confer with the Secretary of the Treasury.” All this was known, 
in a general way, to the commercial element when it was urging 
Hamilton’s appointment as ambassador, and suspected by the 
people at large. Thus, when the rumor of his prospective selection 
spread, there was a roar of protest. ‘The object of a special em- 
bassy might as well be answered by commissioning Lord Grenville 
or Mr. Pitt,’ wrote Bache.2 In the meantime, Senator James 
Monroe had formally protested to Washington against the ap- 
pointment. The opposition was due to the reason set down in the 
memorandum of Hamilton’s warm friend, Rufus King: ‘Colonel 
Hamilton did not possess the general confidence of the country.’ * 

It is easy to understand how hard it was for the Federalists to 
abandon their chief. Thrill enough there is, in the thought of 
Hamilton and Pitt seated across the table in one of the dingy little 
rooms in Downing Street — so similar in precocity, brilliancy, and 
genius. 

One evening four men sat in the candle-lit room of Rufus 
King in Philadelphia. There was Oliver Ellsworth, a powerful 
figure before the Senate and Bar; George Cabot, in some respects 
a saner leader than Hamilton; Caleb Strong, whose strength was 
in common sense and toleration; and King, who was a monu- 
mental figure. It was agreed to make an effort for Hamilton, and 
Ellsworth was designated to call at the Morris mansion for the 
purpose. Washington did not commit himself. Whereupon 
Robert Morris was sent to reénforce the plea, but on learning that 
not only Hamilton and Jefferson were being considered, but Jay 
as well, he sensed the situation and veered to Jay. The result was 
that Jay was summoned and offered the post. He took it under 
consideration. The next day Jay was overrun with visitors. 
Hamilton urged his acceptance, having in the meanwhile written 
Washington withdrawing his own name from the list of aspirants.° 
King, Strong, Cabot, and Ellsworth followed, demanding Jay’s ac- 
ceptance as a duty. While Jay was deliberating, his party was 
thrown into a panic with the rumor that Madison was a possibility, 


1 Bemis, 104. 2 Bemis, 105, 106, 147, 154; Intimate Life, 289. 
3 Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, April 7, 1794. 4 King’s Works, 1, 51%. 
5 Hamilton’s Works, v, 114. 


248 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


and that Monroe had encouraged a hope in Pierce Butler with a 
promise of the support of the Jeffersonians. Jay accepted. 


IV 


No one but Hamilton could have been more obnoxious to the 
Jeffersonians than John Jay. He was now verging on fifty, with a 
notable career behind him on which to base an opinion of his bias. 
In appearance he was amiable but unimpressive, with nothing in 
his manner to indicate his intellectual power.1. Mrs. Adams’s daugh- 
ter was impressed with the ‘benevolence stamped in every fea- 
ture.’ ? Of commanding stature, he was slender, albeit well formed. 
He wore his hair down a little over his forehead, tied behind, 
and moderately powdered. Coal-black, penetrating eyes increased 
his pallor, for he was never robust. Kindly, gracious, courtly in 
social intercourse, he was sternly uncompromising where his in- 
tegrity was involved. Politically, he was an aristocrat, with con- 
tempt for democracy, and an incurable distrust of the people. 
This, with his predominant devotion to the commercial interests, 
fixed his status among the Federalists. Upon the principles of the 
French Revolution he looked with abhorrence. ‘That portion of 
the people,’ he once wrote a friend, ‘who individually mean well 
never was, nor until the millennium will be, considerable.’ Others 
thought the masses too ignorant to act well, but it was reserved 
for Jay to say that they did not even mean well. 

Few Americans then living were better qualified by experience 
for a diplomatic mission. At Madrid he had shown rare tact, 
infinite patience, and dignity in defeat, and he had helped nego- 
tiate the treaty of peace. It was unfortunate that he had, for a 
while, been Secretary of Foreign Affairs, for he had then made a 
secret report to Congress holding England justified in clinging to 
the western posts.* That secret was out. 

In writing Jefferson of the appointment, Madison gave no indi- 
cation of a probable opposition to Jay’s confirmation. ‘The ap- 
pointment of Hamilton was likely to produce such a sensation,’ 
he wrote, ‘that to his great mortification he was laid aside and Jay 
named in his place.’ * But behind closed doors the Senate engaged 


1 Familiar letters, 59 2 Pellew, 218. 
“8 Bemis, 2u6-07. 4 Madison’s Writings, u, 12. 


HECTIC DAYS 249 


in a bitter battle over the confirmation. The opposition made 
much of the impropriety of naming a Justice of the Supreme 
Court, submitting in a resolution ‘that to permit Judges of the 
Supreme Court to hold at the same time other offices emanating 
from and holden at the pleasure of the President is destructive of 
their independence, and that tending to expose them to the in- 
fluence of the Executive is .. . impolitic.’ According to Bache, the 
majority of the Senate subscribed to this reasoning and the 
scruples of enough for confirmation were overcome only by the 
assurances that Jay’s ‘delicacy and sense of propriety would 
certainly induce him to resign his office.’ Eight persisted in op- 
position on the supposition that ‘more was to be feared from Mr. 
Jay’s avarice than was to be hoped from his delicacy or sense of 
propriety.’ ! By the suspicious Adams, who witnessed the struggle 
from the chair, the opposition was ascribed to the fear that a suc- 
cessful negotiation would interfere with plans for the elevation of 
Jefferson to the Presidency. On the surface, Jay’s indifference to 
the navigation of the Mississippi, his mythical monarchical 
principles, his attachment to England and aversion to France, ap- 
peared explanatory of the hostility.” 

The confirmation shifted the attack from the Senate to the 
streets. The Jeffersonians resented it as a purely partisan ap- 
pointment, but the opposition ‘out of doors’ went deeper. Could 
no one be found outside the little coterie of office-holders? Was it 
the intent ‘that certain characters should have a monopoly of 
power?’* The Democratic Society of Philadelphia bore down 
heavily on Jay’s justification for the holding of the posts.4 A 
frontiersman from western Pennsylvania denounced the appoint- 
ment as evidence of indifference to the interest of the western 
country.» After Jay’s report on the posts would it not be answer 
enough for Lord Grenville to quote Jay’s own opinion ‘on file in 
the Secretary’s office’? ® The Democratic Society of Washington, 
Pennsylvania, thought that ‘no man but Washington ... would 
have dared . . . to have insulted the majesty of the people by such 
departure from any principle of republican equality.’ ? 

1 Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, April 24, 1794. 2 Adams, Adams, 1, 472. 

8 Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, April 19, 1794: 

‘ Tbid., May 10, 1794. 5 Ibid., June 26, 1794. 


§ New York Journal, November 5, 1794. 
® Gazette of the United States, July 25, 1794. 


250 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Disregarding the clamor of the ‘rabble,’ Jay had made prepara- 
tions for an immediate departure, and without tendering his resig- 
nation as Chief Justice. The instructions he carried had been 
prepared almost exclusively by Hamilton.! So intimately was the 
economic policy of the Federalists connected with the relations to 
England that these instructions had been determined upon at a 
secret conference of Federalist leaders dominated by their chief.? 
Thus, provided with instructions from a party conference, Jay set 
sail on May 12th from New York. A thousand people assembled at 
Trinity Church to escort him to the ship and give three cheers as 
he went aboard. A salute was fired as he passed the fort. But, 
wrote Greenleaf, ‘the militia had refused parading to honor the 
departure of our extraordinary Minister.’ 3 

If the Federalists were pleased, the Jeffersonians were com- 
placent and Madison wrote that Jay’s appointment ‘is the most 
poweriul blow ever suffered by the popularity of the President.‘ 
But the Federalists regained confidence after several months of 
unpopularity and depression — and it was now the Jeffersonians’ 
time to suffer again — for the Whiskey Boys were up in western 
Pennsylvania. 


vV 


The Whiskey Boys of the ‘insurrection of 1794’ have been pic- 
tured as a vicious, anarchistic, unpatriotic, despicable lot — and 
they were nothing of the sort. These men were doing more for 
America than the speculators of Boston and New York, for they 
were hard-working conquerors of the wilderness, felling the 
forests, draining the swamps, redeeming the land for the cultiva- 
tion of man. Fortunately for America, they were a tough set. 
These rough men in coarse raiment and coonskin, with muskets 
on their shoulders, were not arrayed for a pose. They fought their 
way against savage forces, subduing Nature while warding off the 
blows of the tomahawk. Their lot was hard. No luxuries in the 
log cabins where they fought, wrought, suffered in the Homeric 
work of extending an empire and making it safe for the soft crea- 


1 Hamilton’s Works, v, 115-19; draft of instructions, ibid., 121-23; letter to Jay, rbid., 
123-28; Bemis, 210. 

2 Bemis, 212. 3 New York Journal, May 14, 1794. 

# Madison’s Writings (to Jefferson), u, 14-15. 


HECTIC DAYS 251 


tures of the counting-rooms and drawing-rooms who would ulti- 
mately follow. Newspapers they seldom saw, books scarcely at 
all, and most were illiterate. It was a long cry from these powerful 
figures with muscular arms and dauntless hearts to the perfumed 
dandies simpering silly compliments into the ears of the ladies at 
Mrs. Bingham’s. 

Within a radius of a hundred miles, there were but seventy 
thousand souls. Pittsburgh was a crude little village of twelve 
thousand people. Here they lived, shut off from the eastern coun- 
try by the mountains, for the few passes and winding roads through 
the dense woods were too rough for vehicles. The little trade they 
carried on with the East was through the use of pack-horses. From 
the South they were shut off by savage tribes of red men. Here 
they were, left to shift for themselves by their Government, which 
manifested little interest in their welfare, but did not forget the 
taxes. Because there was no market for their grain, they were 
forced to convert it into alcohol, which was largely their medium 
of barter. Money was seldom seen, and the excise tax laid on their 
alcohol was payable only in money. No people in America re- 
ceived so little benefit from the Government, and none were hit so 
hard by the Excise Law. Perhaps these pioneers who thought them- 
selves abused were ignorant, but there was an intellectual giant 
among them who knewthey wereabused. This was Albert Gallatin. 

A mingling of comedy and pathos is the story of the insurrection. 
The masses were victims of a few demagogues,! but alas, these 
demagogues were working with a real grievance. Public meetings 
had not served to moderate the passions. Wise advisers, like Gal- 
latin, were unable to control, and the extremists followed the more 
flamboyant and lcss scrupulous. The law was resisted, officials 
intimidated, prisoners released from custody by mobs, and farm- 
ers who informed revenue men of the location of stills read their 
mistake by the light of their burning barns. When. Washington 
sought to suppress the insurrection through negotiations, it was 
too late, and the troops he summoned marched. 

It was inevitable that politics should play a part. The Excise 
Law was Hamilton’s child, born to meet the obligations of the 
Assumption. 

1 Madison’s Writings (to his father), n, 16. 


252 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


The Jeffersonians had opposed its passage, and Jefferson 
thought it ‘an infernal law.’ 1 Then, too, it was felt that Hamilton 
welcomed the opportunity to test the Federal power. There had 
been too much skepticism on that point, and he longed for a 
decisive contest with the ‘mob.’ Bache had complained that 
Hamilton’s report to Washington on conditions in the trouble zone 
read ‘like a lawyer’s summing up to a jury.’? The Federalist 
papers traced the trouble to the Jeffersonians because they had 
opposed the enactment of the Excise Law, denounced the Demo- 
cratic Societies for inciting the people to insurrection, and satisfied 
the moron-minded that a demand for a law’s repeal is the same as 
urging its violation. These were the days when the high-flying 
Federalists, under the shadow of Washington on horseback, were 
meditating the Sedition Law. Yes, and the Alien Law as well, for 
they were pointing to the ‘foreigners’ as the ringleaders in the 
‘plot to overthrow the Government.’ The Irish, now numerous in 
Pennsylvania, were mostly Jeffersonians. That was enough. 
Fenno warned of ‘the refuse of Europe that will swarm to our 
shores’ if laws were not rigidly enforced. Wolcott wrote his 
father that the insurrection was ‘a specimen of what we are to 
expect from European immigrants’ and that ‘Pennsylvania need 
not be envied her Irishmen.’4 ‘Down with the Democrats!’ 
‘Down with the critics of public men and measures!’ ‘Down with 
the foreign devils!’ On these themes the Federalists harped 
through the summer and autumn. Their persistence was so per- 
suasive that Muhlenberg, the Speaker, narrowly escaped defeat 
for renomination because he had voted against the Excise Law.5 
The Hamiltonians made the most of the situation. 

Before this fusillade the Jeffersonians and Democratic Societies 
handled themselves well. Never had these societies done more 
than denounce the excise and demand its repeal, and under the 
fierce fire they made their position plain. One after another they 
gave public expression to their views. The Excise Law was repre- 
hensible, but as long as it remained a law it should be obeyed.® 

1 Jefferson’s Works, rx, 293-97. 

2 Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, September 1, 1794. 

3 Gazette of the United States, October 21, 1794. 4 Gibbs, 1, 156. 


5 Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, October 13, 1794. 
* Philadelphia Democratic Society, Gazette of the United States, August 7, 1794; German 


HECTIC DAYS 253 


The Democratic press took a similar stand. ‘The question is not 
whether the excise is a proper or improper mode of collecting 
revenue, wrote Bache. ‘It is constitutional ...and it becomes 
the duty of every citizen to give his aid, if called upon, to enforce 
its execution. If the opposers should triumph... the axe is laid 
to the root of all national government.’ ! Greenleaf in the ‘New 
York Journal’ was quite as direct: ‘The excise, however obnox- 
ious, is the law of the Union; constitutional measures only there- 
fore ought to be adopted.’ ? Jeers of derision from the Federalists 
greeted these resolutions and editorials. The insurrection, they 
contended, ‘is the natural result of these Democratic clubs.’ 
Honest men among their members had been deceived and the 
rioting in the West would open their eyes. ‘Down with the 
Democratic Clubs!’ ‘Down with the critics of governmental 
measures!’ * This aroused the wrath of the Jeffersonians, who now 
took the offensive. Bache summoned the Jeffersonians to join in 
the suppression of the insurrection to ‘give the lie to the bawlers 
against the Democratic Societies.’4 The response was instan- 
taneous. Members of these societies and enemies of the excise 
rushed to the colors. The Irish Democrats of Philadelphia in an 
advertisement urged the Irish to ‘stand to their arms,’ and they 
formed a volunteer company.’ The Federalists found themselves 
in a brisk competition for places in the army. With the Phila- 
delphia aristocrats eager to follow Hamilton, and with the Demo- 
crats demanding places, the city’s quota was soon doubled. ‘Let 
those who derive the most benefit from the revenue laws be the 
foremost to march,’ wrote Bache gleefully. ‘Let the stock-holders, 
bank directors, speculators and revenue officers arrange them- 
selves immediately under the banner of the Treasury, and try their 
prowess in arms as they have in calculation.’ * But the jubilant 
Bache was soon to sing another tune. 
Republican Club, Philadelphia, <bid., September 1, 1794; Democratic Society, Washington, 
North Carolina, South Carolina, Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, October 6, 1794; Democratie 
Society, Canaan, New York, New York Journal, September 4, 1794. 

1 Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, September 10, 1794. 4 September 13, 1794, 

® Gazette of the United States, September 5, 1794. 

* Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, September 15, 1794. 


5 Ibnd., September 24, 1794. 
* Prdadelphia Daily Advertiser, August 20, 1794, 


(254 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


VI 


On the last day of September, three spirited horses stood in 
front of the President’s house on Market Street. Three men 
emerged from the house and mounted, Washington in the center, 
Danbridge, a secretary, on one side, and on the other — Alexander 
Hamilton. They turned their horses toward the camp at Carlisle. 
So Hamilton was going to enforce his law with the sword. Well 
did the Democrats know the spirit in which he rode to his task. 
Under the signature of ‘Tully,’ he had not been able to conceal 
his identity in a series of articles in the summer designed to pre- 
pare the country for forceful measures. These had bristled with 
partisan invective. The Excise Law was defended and its op- 
ponents were charged with playing ‘with passions and pre- 
judices.’? And it was not without passion and prejudice that he 
himself rode forth that September morning.! It was at this time 
that Bache began to sing another tune. In response to what con- 
stitutional duty was the head of the Treasury usurping the func- 
tions of the Secretary of War? he asked. ‘Pray, where is the 
Secretary of War? Is he superintending the operations of the 
Treasury department?’ ? He knew at the time that Knox was on 
a mission of private business in Maine, for more than two months 
before he had sternly taken him to task for his absence in a crisis. 
But Washington was going — why Hamilton? It was whispered 
about that he had intruded without an invitation, and some felt 
‘that his conduct is a first step in a deep laid scheme.’ 4 Madison 
was convinced that Hamilton planned to use the insurrection as a 
pretext for the creation of a standing army,® long before the dy- 
namic young leader rode forth with Washington to join the army. 
A cry of rage went up from the Democrats everywhere. ‘Malig- 
nant — malevolent — uncandid — spiteful — envious — pitiful 
— mean,’ responded Fenno — and so throughout the summer and 
autumn the epithets were hurled, the war in the Kast more ven- 
omous than that on the western front. | 

Meanwhile, Hamilton rode on, close to Washington’s ears, con- 


1 Hamilton’s Works, v1, 420-21. 

8 Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, November 10, 1794. 

8 Ibid., September 8, 1794. 4 Ibid., November 6, 1794, - 
§ Madison’s Writings (to Jefferson), u, 18-19, 


HECTIC DAYS 255 


temptuous of the attacks. Never had he had less respect for 
democracy. ‘It is long since I have learned to hold popular opin- 
ion of no value,’ he wrote Washington after the President had 
returned to Philadelphia, leaving him in actual command.) ‘With- 
out rigor everywhere,’ he wrote King at the same time, ‘our 
tranquillity will be of very short duration.’? It was the tone of 
Federalist society in Philadelphia that led Bond, the British Con- 
sul, in a letter to Grenville, to comment that ‘the establishment of 
a national force to strengthen the hands of the executive party can 
alone secure the existing form of government.’* As the brilliant 
young leader rode along the wood-lined roads, aflame with the 
colors of the fall, his plans for the capitalization of the insurrection 
for his party were made. The Executive should have more power, 
with an army of some pretensions to enforce the laws. The Demo- 
cratic Societies that had awakened the political arrogance of the 
masses should be crushed. Attacks on governmental measures 
should be associated with disloyalty to the State. Perhaps on this 
trip Albert Gallatin, the one financial genius among the Jeffer- 
sonians, could be ruined — even indicted.‘ But the insurrection 
faded at the army’s approach. Nowhere was opposition offered. 
Everywhere the soldiers met with cordial receptions, albeit the 
liberty poles literally lined their way. Only an occasional frontiers- 
man in his cups made a weak show of hostility by hurrahing for 
the Whiskey Boys.® The ringleaders and many who should have 
been unmolested were arrested and sent to jail in Philadelphia 
under military guard. They who fell to General White were 
_ brutally treated, confined in damp cellars, tied back to back, kept 
in confinement from Thursday until Sunday morning with scarcely 
anything to eat or drink. Most of them were misguided youths who 
were redeeming an empire, and not a few had fought in the war 
for independence. Most of these were acquitted on trial. But 
when they reached the ferry at Schuylkill, they were forced to 
decorate their hats with a paper bearing the inscription, ‘In- 
surgent.’ Thus denounced, they were subjected to the humiliation 
of a march down Market Street, like slaves at the chariot of a 


1 Hamilton’s Works, v1, 457. 2 Ibid., x, 77. 
3 Bond’s Letters, 558. 4 Stevens, Gallatin, 90. 
5 Gazette of the United States (letter from a soldier), October 16, 1794, 


256 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Roman conqueror, for the amusement of fashionable ladies at the 
windows.! 

A pitiful spectacle — that march — and more significant than 
many realized. The soldiers were of the first Philadelphia families 
in wealth, gorgeous in their blue uniforms made of the finest broad:« 
cloth, all mounted on magnificent bay horses so nearly uniform in 
size and color that ‘any two of them would make a fine span of 
coach horses.’ A proud show they made with their superb trap- 
pings, their silver-mounted stirrups and martingales, their drawn 
swords glistening in the sun. Patrician conquerors, these. And 
their captives, mounted on nondescript plough and pack horses — 
old men who had fought for American independence, young men, 
all bronzed by the weather, some pale and sick, some sad, others 
flushed with fury that they should be used to make a show for the 
rich Philadelphians who looked upon them with complacent 
smiles. It was the East and the frontier — it was Aristocracy with 
drawn sword and Democracy with the insulting paper in its hat. 
The insurrection was over — a tempest in a teapot. A small army 
of twenty-five hundred was left in the western country like an 
army of occupation. Two men were found guilty of treason and 
pardoned by Washington. The law was vindicated — now for the 
crushing of the Democratic Societies. 


VII 


Foremost among the reasons for the virulence of the Hamil- 
tonians toward these societies was that they were interfering with 
the Federalist plans for the political suppression of the ‘mob.’ 
Many ‘men of no particular importance’ were, by combining, 
making themselves a force to be reckoned with at the polls. Meet- 
ing regularly throughout the year, they were teaching the me- 
chanic, the clerk, the small farmer, to think in terms of politics. 
Worse still, they were manifesting an uncomfortable disposition 
to pry into the proceedings of their representatives in Congress. 
No one saw this more clearly than Jefferson, who, in his retire- 
ment, was observing their growing power with complete approval. 
Throughout the summer of 1794, politicians were constantly driv- 
ing up the hill to Monticello. It was determined to force the fight 

1 Biddle’s Autobiography, 262. 


HECTIC DAYS 257 


in that year’s elections. Candidates were brought out in most of 
the districts, and wherever there was a Democratic Society, the 
fight was a hard one for the Federalists. For the first time they 
faced an organization, disciplined, practical, aflame with en- 
thusiasm. 

This was especially true in Massachusetts where a herculean 
effort was made to defeat Fisher Ames with Dr. Jarvis in the 
Boston district. The Titan of the Federalists in debate was kept 
on the defensive, with charges that he had speculated in the funds 
and was in English pay. The men in the streets made merry with 
Ames’s solemn assurance that England was ‘amicably disposed.’ 
He was an ‘aristocrat,’ and had ‘no faith in republican institu- 
tions’ — a close guess. His friends mobilized for his defense. What 
if he had speculated? — so had Jarvis. Alarmed at the rising 
sentiment for Jarvis, the friends of Ames resorted to modern 
methods of propaganda, with business men signing an appeal 
published as an advertisement.? This, described by the *Inde- 
pendent Chronicle’ as ‘a new practice,’ was turned upon the 
Federalists. ‘How many of the poor seamen or Captains are there 
among the signers who have lost their all? Not one — are they 
of no account in the estimate?’ § Election day found at the polling- 
place ‘the greatest collection of people ever at a Boston election.’ 
The polls opened at eleven and closed at one. The hall was so 
crowded ‘it was difficult to receive the votes with any degree of 
order.’ Half an hour before the polls closed, it was discovered that 
many non-residents and non-taxpayers were in the room, and 
thereafter these were challenged by the Jeffersonians. ‘The Demo- 
crats afterwards charged that Ames had been the beneficiary of 
‘voters consisting of foreigners from on board vessels at the wharf, 
and persons from other towns.’4 Ames carried Boston by a 
majority large enough to overcome his notable losses outside the 
city. Madison wrote Jefferson that Ames owed his victory to ‘the 
vote of negroes and British sailors smuggled in under the loose 
mode of holding elections’ in Massachusetts. Even so, he found a 
ray of sunshine in the close calls of Sedgwick and Good. 


1 Centinel, October 25 and 29, 1794. 2 Ibid., November 1, 1794. 
‘3 November 3, 1794. 4 Independent Chronicle, November 6, 1794. 
§ Madison’s Writings, 11, 29. 


258 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


In New York City the Federalists moved heaven and earth to 
defeat Edward Livingston with the cry that ‘Livingston is an 
aristocrat, his opponent a plebeian’; but this appeal to the masses 
fell flat with the exposé of the questionable patriotism of this 
‘plebeian.’? Tammany, the Democratic Society, and Jeffersonians 
generally fought energetically for their young orator, and the ex- 
hortation to ‘let Edward Livingston, the poor man’s friend, and 
the uniform asserter of the Rights of Man return to Congress,’ was 
not made in vain.! The severity of this blow to the Federalists was 
acknowledged in Ames’s admission that ‘the election of Edward 
Livingston almost gives me the hypo.’? In North Carolina a 
spectacular fight was made to crush the Federalists under the 
leadership of Timothy Bloodworth, directed by the cunning Willie 
Jones, who continued to make history with his whittling knife and 
pipe, and, with the resulting Waterloo, the Hamiltonians began to 
entrench themselves in Federal jobs. There the country-squire 
type rose on the shoulders of the people under leaders who “could 
not have obtained entrance to Lady Washington’s parlors, but 
who knew the difference between the demands of popular institu- 
tions and special interests.’ 4 

Even in Philadelphia the Jeffersonians won a sensational vic- 
tory by defeating Fitzsimons, one of Hamilton’s lieutenants, 
with John Swanwick, who had led the fight in the merchants’ 
meeting for the Madison Resolutions. In Charleston, William 
Smith narrowly escaped defeat through the intervention, accord- 
ing to Madison, ‘ of British merchants .. . and their debtors in the 
country.’® All in all, Madison felt that great progress had been 
made. It was the first real challenge the Federalists had met, and 
they had not enjoyed the experience. Surveying the field in search 
of the cause, they pointed accusing fingers at the Democratic 
Societies. 


‘vor 


Before passing on to the mass attack on these societies, let us 
pause for a hasty review of other happenings of that eventful 


1 New York Journal, December 10, 1794. 8 Ames (to Dwight) 1, 158, 
8 Dodd, Macon, 77. 4 Ibid., '78-79. 
5 Madison’s Writings (to Jefferson), u, 19-20, 


HECTIC DAYS 259 


summer and autumn. Madison was in a tender mood. A little be- 
fore he had fallen under the spell of a merry widow whose glance 
was coquettish and whose tongue was nimble. The early 
autumn found him married to Dolly Todd; the early winter, 
cozily ensconced in the house the Monroes had occupied before 
they went to France.’ 

In the house on the hilltop, Jefferson was living a quiet life. He 
was little more than fifty, his hair touched with gray, his form 
erect, his step elastic, his strength undiminished. With his 
daughters about him, all was gayety about the blazing hearth in 
winter and on the lawn in summer. The supervision of the planta- 
tion was to his taste. There were fences to be repaired, trees to be 
planted. He was interested in the growth of potatoes. He rode 
about ordering the uprooting of weeds here and bushes there. His 
correspondence was light. In acknowledging a book from John 
Adams, he wrote that his retirement had ‘been postponed four 
years too long,’ and that his present happiness left him nothing to 
regret. That fall Washington had sought again to entice him back 
into the Cabinet, but he had been untempted. Though happy in 
his retirement, he was the old war-horse, sniffing the battle from 
afar.? 

And things were happening over the land. Dr. Joseph Priestley, 
the English liberal, driven from England by persecution, had been 
given an uproarious greeting in New York and had replied to ad- 
dresses from Tammany and Democratic Societies with severe 
strictures on the repressive measures of Pitt; and an exotic crea- 
ture, who had been living obscurely in Philadelphia as a teacher, 
startled the country with a pamphlet reply in a vein of sarcasm 
and satire worthy of the masters of the art. England was glorified, 
France crucified, Democratic Societies excoriated, the Irish in 
America damned — and the Hamiltonians rejoiced. Many were 
shocked. Since William Cobbett was to work under the encourage- 
ment of Hamilton,’ we shall become better acquainted with him 
by and by. 

Otherwise life was moving along in Philadelphia much the same 
as usual. Society was still in the saddle. Blanchard, who was 


1 Madison’s Writings, u, 27; Goodwin, Dolly Madison, 26. 
2 Randall, u, 245: Domestic Life, 231. 3 Intimate Life, 69. 


260 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


thrilling the people with balloon ascensions, was postponing one 
of his ascents ‘because of the marriage of a person of distinction.’ ? 
The French madness was unabated, and on July 11th a French 
victory was theatrically celebrated. ‘La Carmagnole’ was danced 
in the streets. Public officials marched with the populace to the 
French Minister’s house where orations were heard and ‘La 
Marseillaise’ was sung. At Richardet’s five hundred sat down to 
a noisy feast, after which they danced around a liberty tree, set off 
fireworks, and burned a British flag.2, Even Rickett’s Circus was 
so fashionable that Fenno hoped he would begin his performances 
an hour earlier to permit citizens to enjoy the dare-devil feats be- 
fore repairing to the House of Representatives to hear the debates.? 
Bache, educated abroad, was a lover of the play and interested 
in seeing democratic features introduced — say, an occasional 
‘simple air’ interspersed with the classics for the delectation of the 
‘gallery gods who pay their money like other folks.’ * But the time 
was to come when even Bache was to make sad grimaces at demo- 
cratic manners in the theater. This was when the ‘gallery gods’ 
hit upon a novel mode of entertainment, of selecting some in- 
offensive ‘aristocrat’ in the pit and demanding that he doff his 
hat to the gallery. Naturally ignored, ‘a hundred stentorian voices 
would call out for his punishment.’ Thereupon the gods would pelt 
the unfortunate victim with apples and pears, sticks, and even 
stones, and assail him ‘with scurrillity and abuse.’ Throughout 
the evening the persecution would continue. Spitting, and empty- 
ing beer-bottles upon him increased his misery. It was bad 
enough, thought Bache, to spit upon the men ‘aristocrats,’ with- 
out spattering the delicate dresses of the aristocratic ladies with 
beer. One night most of the orchestra was driven out of the house. 
‘It is time to stop this growing evil,’ wrote Bache, ‘which has been 
on the increase ever since the opening of the house.’ > The Feder- 
alists were delighted at his embarrassment. Here was the rabid 
editor’s ‘democracy.’ These people in the galleries were his ‘sov- 
ereign people.’ And all this was due to the leveling influence of 
the Democratic Societies. They must go! 


1 Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, April 10, 1794. 
2 Gazette of the United States, November 1, 1794, 8 Thid. 
@ Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, May 7, 1794. § Ibid., October 24, 1794. 


HECTIC DAYS 261 


IX 


When, in his Message to Congress, Washington made his 
amazing attack on the Democratic Societies, the influence of. 
Hamilton and the Federalist leaders, who had received not a few 
scars in the recent elections, was evident. Here was a proclama- 
tion that the masses of the people in private life had no right to 
organize for political purposes. That the Hamiltonians had no 
interest in the mass of the people was generally understood.! They 
were Impressed with petitions from the Cincinnati, or Chambers of 
Commerce, but frankly contemptuous of those signed by mere 
citizens ‘of no particular importance.’ When these people organ- 
ized into Democratic Societies, things were going too far. If this 
continued, the ordinary mechanic might get the impression that 
he counted in governmental affairs. There was too much of this 
democratic virus in the body politic. 

The Jeffersonians were momentarily stunned by Washington’s 
denunciation, but quickly rallied. Madison, calm, composed, 
courteous, but grimly determined, sat on the House committee to 
frame the Reply to the President’s Address, and he planned to 
ignore that feature of the Message. He was not deceived as to its 
purpose or inspiration. ‘It was obvious that a most dangerous 
game was playing against the Republicans,’ he wrote Jefferson. 
‘The insurrection was...deservedly odious. The Democratic 
Societies were presented as in league with it. The Republican 
part of Congress was to be drawn into an ostensible patronage of 
those societies, and into an ostensible opposition to the President.” 
The sponsorship of a purely partisan attack by Washington pained. 
Madison, but it did not intimidate him. He considered it an as- 
sault on the citadel of liberty, and it was, in truth, the forerunner 
of the infamous Sedition Law.? In a letter to Monroe, he described 
the attack as the ‘greatest error in his [Washington’s] political 
career.’ > That it was ‘an attack on the essential and constitutional 
right of the citizen,’ he had no doubt.’ Jefferson characterized it 
as ‘one of the extraordinary acts of boldness of which we have seen 


1 Professor Morse, in The Federalist Party in Massachusetts, makes this point. 
® Madison’s Writings, 1, 21-23, * Ibnd., 23-27. 
4 Ibid. (to Jefferson), 28-30. 


262 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


so many from the faction of monocrats’ — an attack ‘on the free- 
dom of discussion, the freedom of writing, printing and publish- 
ing.’ And what of the Cincinnati, ‘self-constituted,’ ! whose mem- 
bers met behind closed doors, maintained a system. of secret cor- 
respondence, while ‘carving out for itself hereditary distinctions? ’? 

Even so, the Jeffersonians would have taken no notice of the 
attack had not the Federalists forced the issue by proposing an 
amendment to the Reply commendatory of the assault on the 
societies. That Hamilton was the inspiration of this move there 
can be no doubt. When the debate began, we find him hurrying 
around to Fitzsimmons’s house with ‘proof’ of the connection be- 
tween the societies and the insurrection; and, finding the mover 
of the amendment absent, leaving a memorandum. The Hamil- 
tonian proof was that the Mingo-Creek Society was ‘sometimes 
called the Democratic Society’; that some of the insurrectionists 
were on its membership rolls; that one of its members had led one 
of the attacks and another a second. Quite enough, he thought, 
to damn all the societies in America, albeit almost all had de- 
nounced the insurrection, and many of their members had marched 
under arms against the rebels.? This was the reasoning of all the 
extreme Federalists. 

Into the debate both parties dragged their heavy artillery. 
Madison, Giles, and Nicholas on one side, Ames, Sedgwick, Smith, 
and Tracy on the other. ‘Stand by the President!’ — from the 
Hamiltonians. ‘Stand by the Constitution!’ — from the Jeffer- 
sonians. ‘Plunge these societies into contempt — sink them into 
abhorrence and detestation,’ shouted Sedgwick, still smarting 
from the pummelling they had given him.‘ ‘The people have a 
right to speak and to think,’ protested Venable of Delaware. “The 
fact that the President thinks them guilty is enough,’ thought 
Murray of Maryland. ‘I refuse to surrender my opinions to the 
President where a matter of fact is involved,’ retorted Nicholas. 
‘No,’ thundered Giles, ‘the fiat of no person in America should 
ever be taken for truth.’ ‘Infamous creatures!’ snorted Smith of 
Charleston who had felt their blows. Nonsense, exclaimed Christie 
of Maryland, the members in Baltimore ‘were not the fair weather 


1 Washington’s phrase. 4 2 Jefferson’s Works (to Madison), rx, 293-97. 
* Hamilton’s Works, x, 78-79. 4 Annals, November 25, 1794. 


HECTIC DAYS 263 


patriots of the present day, but the patriots of Seventy-five.’ Yes, 
added Carnes of Georgia, citing the case where one of these so- 
cieties ‘turned out as volunteers against the rioters,’ and express- 
ing the hope that the time ‘will never come when the people of 
America shall not have leave to assemble and speak their mind.’ 

Giles and Madison closed against the amendment in powerful 
constitutional arguments on the rights of citizens to have opinions 
on men and measures or to express them by voice or pen, in- 
dividually or collectively; and Ames closed for it, making much of 
the burning of Jay in effigy by the society at Lexington, and pic- 
turing the people on tip-toes on all the post-roads to learn whether 
Washington or the societies had triumphed in the House.’ Dexter 
foreshadowed the Sedition Law, toward which the Federalists 
were feeling their way, with the declaration that the Constitution 
did not give the people ‘the precious right of vilifying their own 
Government and laws.’ Madison warned of the tendency, the 
vote was taken, and in the end the Reply of the House went to the 
President without a reference to his attack on the clubs. 

But in the press the fight went on throughout the year. “Are 
men’s principles among the subjects of public concern which you 
are to discuss?’ asked the incredulous Noah Webster of the 
‘American Minerva.’ ‘If so, your society bears a resemblance to 
the Spanish Inquisition, destitute only of its power.’? One of 
Fenno’s scribes was moved to hilarity at the absurdity of the de- 
fense that the societies had uniformly denounced the insurrection. 
Had they not at the same time denounced the excise law and asked 
for its repeal? * Republican societies checks and balances? sneered 
the ‘Centinel.’ ‘So are lanthorn posts and guillotines.’ The same 
journal neatly condensed the entire Federalist line of attack in a 
satirical ‘book of the generations and downfall of Jacobinism,’ 
from the hour ‘Brissot begat the Jacobin club of Paris.’ Genét — 
Democratic Societies of America — the Pittsburgh rebellion — the 
‘armament of fifteen thousand men — an expense of two million 
dollars — ran the argument.‘ Thus it was reduced to a matter of 
dollars and cents. 


1 Annals, November 25-27, 1794. 2 January 24, 1794. 
8 Gazette of the United States, December 11, 1794, 
4 [bid., October 14, 1794, 


264 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Meanwhile, the societies, recovering from the shock of the at- 
tack, stood to their guns, and issued statements setting forth in 
moderate tone principles, then jeered, which no one would care to 
challenge publicly in America to-day. The German Republican 
Club of Philadelphia concentrated the defense in a few words: 
‘Are we the abettors of insurgents for supposing that Government 
can do wrong, and for disapproving the excise? Then is the free- 
dom of opinion at an end.’ ? 

But the shadow of Washington fell darkly on the clubs and their 
power as organizations rapidly diminished. Many who refused to 
antagonize Washington openly were deeply resentful, and from 
that hour the popular impression grew that he had aligned himself 
as a partisan of the Federalists. From that hour, too, the high- 
flying Federalists began to move with greater confidence and 
celerity toward the Sedition Law. The erstwhile members of the 
societies fell back into the body of citizenship, but more keenly 
and intelligently interested in politics than ever before, and more 
than ever determined to make their influence felt. They were not 
to forget what they had learned of tactics, organization, and pro- 
paganda, and very soon the Jeffersonian Party would be the bene- 
ficiary of the Washington assault. 

If this congressional session foreshadowed the Sedition Law, it 
also foreshadowed the Alien Law in a Naturalization Act reflecting 
the Federalist distrust of the immigrant. The Catholics were at- 
tacked in the debate, and Madison indignantly replied that ‘there 
is nothing in their religion inconsistent with the purest republican- 
ism.’ ? When the Jeffersonians created a diversion by offering an 
amendment that no titled foreigner could be admitted to citizen- 
ship until he had renounced his title, the Federalists stupidly fell 
into the trap and were instantly on their toes with indignant pro- 
tests. Instead of accepting the amendment as a joke, they were 
soon pleading that titles were not so bad, and it did not matter if 
titled gentlemen voted and held office. ‘You may force a man to 
renounce his title,’ said Smith of Charleston, ‘but you cannot pre- 
vent his neighbor from calling both him and his wife by the title.’ 
Great must have been the merriment in the taverns at the spec- 
tacle of the Federalist leaders fighting with desperation and in- 

1 Gazette of the United States, December 29, 1794, 8 Annals, January 1, 1794. 


HECTIC DAYS 265 


dignation against the proposal to prevent Lords, Dukes, Barons, 
and Viscounts from becoming American citizens without leaving 
their titles outside the door. What matter if Sedgwick did explain 
that the acceptance of the amendment would be a justification of 
the charge that there was a monarchical party in the country? — 
the better psychologists among the Jeffersonians knew that with 
the man in the street nothing could have been more conclusive on 
that point than the unification of the Hamiltonians in opposition 
to the amendment.! They had been maneuvered into standing up 
and being counted against the renunciation of titles — and the 

‘mob’ shouted with joy. 

1 Annals, January 1, 1794. 


CHAPTER XiI 
THE MARCHING MOBS 


I 


URING the remainder of the short session of Congress, 
feeling ran high. The Jeffersonians made a second foolish 
attempt to trace some act of official turpitude to Hamilton, and 
signally failed. The latter was now ready to go. His great work 
had been achieved with the establishment of public credit. His 
official honor had been vindicated. Never had he stood so high in 
the esteem of the commercial interests, the only class whose good 
opinion he coveted. He was the leader of the leaders of his party. 
With the rank and file he had never been popular, though always 
admired, but he sought no popularity with the multitude for whom 
he had a certain contempt. After years in the public service, he 
found himself in poverty, confronted with obligations to an in- 
creasing family. Early in December he wrote of his plans to 
Angelica Church: ‘You say I am a politician, and good for no- 
thing. What will you say when you learn that after January next 
I shall cease to be a politician at all? Such is the fact. I have . 
formally and definitely announced my intention to resign and have 
ordered a house to be taken for me in New York.’? A little earlier 
he had hoped to take a vacation in Europe. He was ‘heartily 
tired’ of office. Only the opportunity to quit ‘with honor and 
without decisive prejudice to public affairs’ held him at all. Now 
political conditions seemed favorable for an early retirement for 
the elections promised ‘to prove favorable to the good cause.’ ? 
When Jefferson retired, Fenno announced the event in two lines, 
but he heralded the resignation of Hamilton in a glowing eulogy, 
double-spaced, of the man who had made “two blades of grass to 
grow where none grew before.’ * This was too much for Bache. 
‘America will long regret that his work lives after him,’ he wrote. © 
And why the fawning rhapsody? Had Washington done nothing? 


1 Intimate Ife, 230. 2 Hamilton’s Works, x, 78. 
8 Gazette of the United States, February 9, 1795. 


THE MARCHING MOBS 267 


— nor Congress? — nor the natural advantages of the country? — 
nor the Constitution? ‘No, the Secretary was the life, the soul, 
the mind of our political body; the spirit has fown — then we are 
a lifeless mass, dust, ashes, clay.’ 

But the sneer of Bache and the contemptuous fling of Madi- 
son, because it was ‘pompously announced in the newspapers 
that poverty drives him back to the Bar for a livelihood,’ ? 
could not rob the daring innovator of his triumphs. ‘The 
Lancaster Troop of Horse, dining, toasted him, — ‘May his 
domestic felicity be equal to his public services.’ ? The day 
the story of this toast was printed, a hundred and fifty of the 
leading merchants, capitalists, and social leaders of Philadelphia 
sat down to a farewell dinner in his honor. Judges of the Supreme 
Court and governmental functionaries were in attendance. When 
the project was suggested, merchants ‘crowded to the subscription 
paper,’ and many were excluded for lack of space. Toasts were 
mingled with convivial songs, and wine, we may be sure, flowed 
like water. After Hamilton had toasted the Philadelphia mer- 
chants, he withdrew, and he himself was toasted. ‘May he enjoy 
in private life that happiness to which his public services have so 
justly entitled him’ — and the rafters rang.4 Two nights later, the 
fashionable Dancing Assembly, celebrating Washington’s birth- 
day with a dance and dinner, took note of Hamilton’s departure 
with a toast.» When he reached New York, he found another 
dinner awaiting him, when more than two hundred people in his 
honor sat down at Tontine’s Coffee-House ‘at the expense of the 
merchants of the city.’ There among the guests were the Chancel- 
lor, the Judges, the Speaker of the Assembly, the Recorder of the 
City, the President of Columbia. More convivial songs and stories, 
more wine and cheers and laughter, and again Hamilton toasted 
the merchants — of New York. And again he retired to permit 
the toastmaster to propose ‘Alexander Hamilton’ with nine cheers. 
Reporting the affair honestly enough, the ‘New York Journal’ 
could not omit the observation that ‘few of our best citizens and 
genuine Republicans were present.’ The editor had never ques- 


1 Philadelphia Daily Advertiser, February 10, 1795. 

2 Madison’s Writings (to Jefferson), m1, 35. 

8 Gazette of the United States, February 18, 1795. 

¢ Jiid., February 20, 1795. & [bid., February 22, 1795. 


268 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


tioned Hamilton’s ‘financial abilities,’ but he doubted ‘the pro- 
priety of his political principles.” However, ‘in the language of the 
play bills it was a great dinner, Mr. Hodgkinson,! one of the 
managers of the farce being present.’ ? 

Having been thus wined and dined, toasted and roasted, Hamil- 
ton retired with his family to the Schuyler mansion in Albany for 
relaxation and rest. Perhaps he could not afford the coveted trip 
to Europe — it did not materialize. In April, Justice Iredell wrote 
his wife that Hamilton had ‘already received more than a year’s 
salary in retainer fees’ and that a ‘number of mechanics here 
[New York] have declared that they will build him a house at their 
own expense ’— a promise unredeemed.’ Hamilton had hoped to 
open his New York office in May, but autumn found his family 
lingering under the hospitable roof of the Schuylers.4 

Such, however, was his insatiable craving for power that he was 
unable to forget, even for a month, the familiar field of battle. En- 
raged by a triumph of his political foes on a measure in the House, 
he wrote furiously to King that ‘to see the character of the country 
and the Government sported with... puts my heart to the tor- 
ture.’ > Events were not moving with the felicity of old under the 
successor of his own choosing, and he turned spitefully upon some 
of his most faithful followers. ‘So,’ he wrote King, ‘it seems that 
under the present administration of the department, Hillhouse 
and Goodhue are to be ministers in the House... and Ellsworth 
and Strong in the Senate. Fine work we shall have. But I swear 
the nation shall not be dishonored with impunity.’ * Clearly he 
had determined to keep his hand on the driving wheel from afar. 
The Cabinet was composed largely of his followers, only Randolph 
remaining to plague him, and his days were short and full of 
trouble. The Federalists in Congress could be directed by cor- 
respondence — and should be; Washington not only could, but 
would be kept constantly advised. Hamilton retired from office in 
January, 1795, but he was not to retire from power until Adams, 
repeatedly betrayed, should drive the Hamiltonian stool-pigeons 
from his Cabinet some years later. Meanwhile, a party crisis was 


1 A favorite actor. 2 New York Journal, February 28 and March 4, 1795. 
3 McRee, Iredell, 11, 442. 4 Intimate Life, 205-06. 
5 King’s Works, u, 5-6. 6 King’s Works, u, 7. 


THE MARCHING MOBS 269 


approaching that would require all Hamilton’s genius to save his 
party from destruction. 
I 

We speak of the ‘Jay Treaty’; the Jeffersonians called it the 
‘Grenville Treaty’; as a matter of fact it was more nearly the 
Hamilton treaty, and it was certainly a Federalist Party treaty. 
Jay had arrived in London, to be so graciously received and so 
lavishly entertained that he had cautiously refrained from men- 
tioning this unusual cordiality in official reports. Thomas Pinck- 
ney, the regular Minister, who had stoutly fought for Ameri- 
can rights, was shunted aside. ‘If I should say that I had no 
unpleasant feelings on the occasion I should be insincere,’ he 
wrote his brother. But he accepted the situation with good 
grace. 

In time, after receiving attentions from the King not previously 
accorded America’s diplomats at the court, Jay sat down with Lord 
Grenville to the negotiation of a treaty. The latter, a favorite of 
Pitt’s, comparatively young, but rising rapidly because of an ab- 
normal capacity for hard work rather than brilliancy, was in no 
sense the intellectual superior of Jay. In the first days of the 
negotiations, the prospects were bright enough for the Federalist 
emissary. England had previously faced and accepted the neces- 
sity for the abandonment of the western posts, and she was not, 
at the moment, in position vigorously and persistently to protest’ 
the other outstanding American claims. The conditions on 
the Continent were far from satisfactory, with the coalition ap- 
parently verging toward disruption. England was not seeking an- 
other open enemy, and she could not afford the loss of the Ameri- 
can trade. But there was another danger threatening that was 
causing Grenville no little distress — and this is where Jay held 
the high card in the gamble. 

The neutral nations of Europe had grown tired of the arrogant 
sea policy of the English, and steps were taken for the unification 
of neutrals in defense of neutral rights. Sweden and Denmark had 
ratified an Armed Neutrality Convention on March 27, 1794, 


1 Beard, Economic Origins, 295; Bemis, 27] 
* Pinckney, Life of Pinckney, 123-24, 


270 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


agreeing to join their fleets for the protection of their peoples. 
Pinckney had been approached by the Swedish Minister in 
London with an invitation to the American Government to join. 
He had received the invitation with frank enthusiasm, and thought 
his country would agree.! This was all known to Grenville, who 
was paiufully impressed with the possibilities. He had put his 
spies to the task of opening diplomatic mail and keeping him in- 
formed of developments. Instructions had been sent to Ham- 
mond, the Minister at Philadelphia, to exert all his ingenuity to 
prevent the United States from joining the Scandinavian combina- 
tion? The day that Grenville sat down with Jay, the former had 
been informed by Count Finckenstein, the Prussian Minister of 
Foreign Affairs, that the position of America was doubtful, and 
that Jefferson had left the Cabinet to go to Denmark to assist in 
the organization and consolidation of the neutrals.’ It was Gren- 
ville’s cue to procrastinate on the treaty until he could ascertain 
to a certainty just what the United States contemplated in refer- 
ence to the Armed Neutrality. Impatient over the delay, Jay 
submitted a complete draft of a treaty on September 20, 1794, 
which was, in many respects, an admirable document. When the 
treaty which was finally signed was submitted with the other 
papers to the American Government, the draft of September 20th 
was conspicuously absent — for the actual treaty was an almost 
complete surrender of the claims of the first draft, and its publica- 
tion would have had a disastrous effect on Jay’s reputation and 
on his party. 

Ten days before Jay submitted his draft, Grenville was in pos- 
session of a curious report from Hammond. The latter had been 
informed by Hamilton, ‘with every demonstration of sincerity,’ 
that under no circumstances would America join the Armed 
Neutrality. This, Hammond understood, was secret information 
on Cabinet action.‘ Thus, through the amazing indiscretion of 
Hamilton, Jay was deprived of his high card at the critical moment 
of the negotiations. Hamilton was standing behind Jay, to be 
sure, but he was holding a mirror, however unconsciously, which 
reflected the American negotiator’s cards to the enlightenment of 
the suave and smiling Grenville. From that moment Grenville 

1 Bemis, 224, $ [bid., 225, 8 Ibid., 226-27, « Tbid., 246. 


THE MARCHING MOBS 271 


stiffened his opposition to Jay’s demands, and thenceforth the 
latter was in a continuous retreat.' 

The result was a sweeping victory for England and the most 
humiliating treaty to which an American has ever put his signa- 
ture.2 It provided for the abandonment of the western posts after 
June 1, 1796, but there was to be no remuneration for stolen negro 
slaves and no provision for ending the impressment of American 
seamen. The principle that ‘free ships make free goods’ was sur- 
rendered and the contraband list was extended. British claimants 
could appeal to the Mixed Debts Commission without first ex- 
hausting their resources in American courts, while the American 
claimants had to exhaust the resources of the British courts before 
appealing to the Commission. The Mississippi was to be opened 
to British trade; and the West Indian trade, which Jay was 
specifically instructed to secure, was granted to American ships of 
seventy tons burden only, and then on condition that the West 
Indian trade should be wholly free to British vessels and that 
American vessels should not carry molasses, sugar, coffee, cocoa, 
and cotton to any ports in the world except their own. The East 
Indian trade was opened to Americans provided no further re- 
strictions should be laid on British commerce. And Jay agreed to 
provisions — despite specific instructions to enter into no obliga- 
tions incompatible with our treaty obligations to France — which 
amounted to an alliance with England against America’s ally in 
the Revolution.’ 

All in all, it was a rather disreputable performance which 
even Hamilton admitted to Talleyrand, in a social moment, to 
be an ‘execrable one’ on the part of ‘an old woman.’* By a 
queer coincidence, Jefferson described the treaty with the same 
adjective, as ‘an execrable thing,’ in a letter to Edward Rutledge.® 

However, Hamilton, familiar with the treaty long before it 
reached the Senate, was willing to accept the ‘execrable thing’ 
provided the twelfth article, forbidding American. vessels from 


1 Bemis, 232-51. 2 Jind., 261. 

3 Bemis, 267, quotes a French scholar, R. Guyot, as describing the Jay Treaty as ‘almost 
equivalent to a treaty of alliance.’ 

4 Related by Talleyrand to Volney, who told it to Jefferson, Anas, 336-37. Senator 
Lodge, in his biography of Hamilton, accepts this characterization as not improbable. 

5 Jefferson’s Works, rx, 313-14. 


272 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


carrying cotton, among other articles, to the ports of Europe, 
should be suspended. He wrote William Bradford, the Attor- 
ney-General, in May, of his distress over this article,! and 
Rufus King about the middle of June.? But he was sternly set on 
ratification, against a renewal of negotiations, and that was 
enough to determine the course of the Senate. There was no other 
way. It was a Federalist negotiation. The negotiator had been 
chosen in a Federalist caucus. The instructions had been de- 
termined upon in a Federalist conclave. They were practically 
written by the great Federalist leader, and the purpose served was 
in line with Federalist economics.® 

Thus, when the Senate met in extraordinary session, its work 
was cut out for it. For eighteen days the Senators debated in 
secret. The American people knew that the treaty was under 
consideration, but they did not have the most remote idea what 
it was all about. For eight days the discussion was general; then 
the Federalists, acting under Hamilton’s inspiration, submitted a 
form of ratification conditioned on the suspension of that portion | 
of Article XII which enumerated the articles American ships 
could not carry to Europe. Meanwhile, the commercial inter- 
ests in New York were becoming apprehensive over the delay. 
Hamilton was bombarded with anxious inquiries on the report 
that the treaty had been rejected, and was able to deny it, 
writing at the same time to Rufus King of the ‘disquietude.’ 4 
Two days after Hamilton wrote King, Senator Aaron Burr 
moved to postpone ratification and to institute new negotiations, 
but this, with other hostile motions, was voted down. At length 
the Federalist programme was pushed through, Senator Gunn of 
Georgia voting to ratify. ‘Ten Senators remained in opposition. 
And then the Senate, with a keen appreciation of the humiliating 
nature of the treaty, solemnly voted to ‘not countenance the 
publication’ of the document.’ Such a high-handed proceeding, 
predicated upon the theory that the people had no right to know 
to what they had been bound, made an unpleasant impression 

1 Hamilton’s Works, x, 98-99. — 2 Ibid., x, 101-02. 

ha See Beard’s illuminating chapter on the economics of the treaty, Economic Origins, 268- 


4 King’s Works, 11, 14; Hamilton’s Works, x, 109. 
6 Wolcott’s phrase in letter to Mrs. Wolcott, Gibbs, 1, 199, 


THE MARCHING MOBS 273 


even on Hamilton, who wrote Wolcott that it was ‘giving much 
scope to misrepresentation and misapprehension.” ! 

But there was one Senator who refused to be bound in a con- 
spiracy to conceal from the people the people’s business. Stevens 
Thomson Mason of Virginia had crowded into his thirty-five years 
as much patriotic service as any of his colleagues. Although but 
sixteen when the Declaration of Independence was signed, he had 
served as a volunteer aide on the staff of Washington at York- 
town, and had been made a brigadier-general in the militia of 
Virginia. In the few years that remained to him, he was to earn 
an appreciation that partisan historians have denied him by his 
militant challenge to the Sedition Law. Ardent and courageous, 
he felt that the people had a right to know the contents of the 
treaty, and, while the Federalist Senators were congratulating 
themselves on having bound the Senate to secrecy, Bache’s paper 
came out with the full text of the treaty. Mason had deliberately, 
openly, defiantly taken a copy to the office of the ‘Aurora.’ 

_ Then something like a cyclone swept the land. 


Tit 


The injunction of secrecy and Bache’s sharp comments upon it 
had prepared the public for something startling. ‘A secrecy in re- 
- lation to a law which shall rival the darkness of a conclave of a 
seraglio.’ 2 ‘Secrecy is the order of the day in our government — 
charming expedient to keep the people in ignorance.’ * ‘What are 
we to infer from this secrecy’ but that ‘the treaty will be unac- 
ceptable to the people?’ 4 ‘This imp of darkness,’ he had written, 
referring to the treaty.5 When Mason’s copy reached Bache’s 
paper, it was eagerly seized upon by the people, and copied in all 
the papers of the country. The people all but rose en masse. 

July 3d found the Philadelphia streets littered with a handbill 
urging an attack on a British vessel at Goldbury’s wharf. That 
night the streets leading to the wharf were packed with people, 
most of them from the section of the laborers, with a sprinkling of 
the curious. The Governor had ordered out some soldiers who 


1 Hamilton’s Works, x, 107. 
2 Aurora, June 16, 1795. 8 Jbid., June 18, 1793. 
4 Ibid., June 20, 1795. Ms Ibid., June 26, 1795, 


QT A JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


prepared to meet the emergency with stern methods. Until eleven 
o’clock the crowd stood in sullen silence waiting for something to 
happen, for some one to lead the assault. Darkly outlined in the 
night loomed the British ship, in front the silent soldiers, behind 
them the angry crowd. Slowly this dwindled, and before mid- 
night the danger was over, but the sight of the ship had not 
worked a conciliatory spirit in the people.! It aroused the mob 
spirit for action on the Fourth. 

Throughout that day — an ominous quiet. Out in the suburb of 
Kensington, the ship carpenters were planning a demonstration. 
This was postponed till night because the troops were out in honor 
of the Nation’s natal day. Eleven o’clock found five hundred men, 
mostly workmen, moving from the suburb on the city. By the 
lights they carried could be seen an effigy of Jay. This, according 
to rumors that flew over the town, was to be burned before Wash- 
ington’s house on Market Street. Then a feverish summoning of 
the light-horse, little Paul Reveres hurrying from door to door 
summoning soldiers to the saddle. Long before the marching mob 
reached the heart of the city, the cavalry was drawn up on Market 
Street waiting. On moved the mob in uncanny silence. Most of 
the people were asleep, and only the bobbing lights of the marchers 
indicated that something was stirring. No attempt was made to 
reach Washington’s house. Through other streets tramped the 
mob in orderly procession, then back to Kensington where Jay 
was burned in efigy. Just for a moment a pause in the jubilation, 
when Captain Morrell and some of his men dashed into the glare 
of the lights to disperse the mob and to be pelted with stones and 
forced to precipitate flight. Only that, and an advertisement in 
the papers the next day announcing the finding of ‘an elegant 
horseman’s sword’ which could be recovered by ‘producing his 
muddy regimentals.’ Little damage had been done. Some one 
had hurled a stone through the window at Bingham’s house, but 
that was all, aside from the bruises of Captain Morrell, who had 
fought neither too wisely nor too well. 

The next morning the curious strolled toward Kensington, 
where they found the ashes, and a board stuck in the ground bear- 
ing the words: ‘Morrell’s Defeat — Jay Burned July 4, 1795.’ 

1 Aurora, July 3, 1795. 


THE MARCHING MOBS 275 


There, unmolested, it stood for days. ‘I think an attempt to take 
it down without considerable force would be attended by serious 
consequences,’ wrote a Philadelphian to a friend in New York.’ 
The story of the burning spread rapidly over the country, carrying 
its inevitable suggestion.? While the ship carpenters were nursing 
their plans at Kensington, the Philadelphia County Brigade was 
celebrating the Fourth with a dinner in the woods along Frankfort 
Creek, where the French Treaty was toasted, and those seeking 
to supersede it were denounced as traitors. The ten Senators who 
voted against ratification were praised for having ‘refused to sign 
the death warrant of American liberty,’ Mason was eulogized, and 
the woods reverberated with shouts and laughter over the toast: 
‘A Perpetual Harvest to America — but clipped wings, lame legs, 
the pip and an empty crop to all Jays.’ * Three weeks later a throng 
assembled in the State House yard to take formal action, with men 
of the first distinction in the community on the platform. A me- 
morial of denunciation was read, adopted without debate, and the 
treaty was thrown contemptuously to the crowd, which pounced 
upon it, stuck it on the end of a pole, and marched to the French 
Minister’s house where a ceremony was performed, albeit Adet 
denied himself to the mob; thence on to the British Minister’s 
house where the treaty was burned while the mob cheered lustily; 
then on to the British Consul’s and Bingham’s for a hostile de- 
monstration. 

The Federalist leaders observed these demonstrations with mis- 
givings, whistling the while to keep up courage. Somewhere on 
the outskirts stood Oliver Wolcott, who instantly wrote Washing- 
ton at Mount Vernon that the crowd was composed mostly of 
‘the ignorant and violent part of the community.’ Nothing 
shocked him more than the introduction to the mob of Hamilton 
Rowan, the Irish patriot, and the swinging of hats in token of 
welcome. Judge M’Kean swung his, Wolcott supposed, “because 
he expected the honor soon of having the fellow to hang for some 
roguery in this country.’‘ Even more shocking to Wolcott was 

1 Argus, July 15, 1795. 

2 Gibbs (Wolcott to Mrs. Wolcott), 1, 209; Philadelphia: the Place and People, 310; Hiltz- 
heimer, 215; New York Argus, July 8, 1795; Charleston City Gazette, August 22, 1795. 


3 Aurora, July 7, 1795. 
4 Gibbs, 1, 217. Rowan was a patriot, tried by a packed jury, and defended by John 


276 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


the invitation of the colorful Blair McClenachan, as he threw the 
treaty to the crowd, to ‘kick it to hell.’ }- Pickering assured Wash- 
ington that there ‘were not probably two hundred whom Chief 
Justice M’Kean would deem qualified to sit on a jury.’ ? 

But it was not to be so easy to belittle the protest or to confine 
it to Philadelphia. It spread — like an epidemic. In New York 
City, the home of Jay, the feeling was virulent. The Fourth of 
July celebrations disclosed the sharp divisions between the com- 
mercial interests and the body of the people. With the merchants 
dining at the Tontine with Jay, the Democrats at Hunter’s with 
the French Consul were shouting approval of the toast: ‘May the 
cage constructed to coop up the American eagle prove a trap for 
none but Jays and King-birds.’ * The ‘Argus’ published a scathing 
open letter to ‘Sir John Jay.’ * With the advertisement of a town 
meeting, Hamilton and King sought to organize the opposition of 
the merchants at a meeting at the Tontine when it was decided to 
contest the issue at the mass meeting. An address, protesting 
against the method of the proposed meeting, written by Hamilton, 
was given to the papers, and circulated in handbills. The stroke 
of twelve found from five to seven thousand people assembled, and 
the plans of the Hamiltonians were instantly surmised. There, on 
the stoop on Broad Street stood Hamilton himself, with King and 
a few others grouped about him. At the stroke of the clock, Hamil- 
ton, without waiting for the organization of the meeting, began to 
speak impassionedly. ‘Let us have a chairman!’ cried the crowd. 
A chairman was chosen and took his station on the balcony of 
Federal Hall. Instantly Peter Livingston began to speak. Hamil- 
ton interrupted. Cries of “Order! Order!’ from the people. ‘Who 
shall speak first?’ asked the chairman. ‘Livingston,’ shouted the 
greater part of the crowd. But when he sought to comply, he 
could not raise his voice above the confusion, though he managed 
to reach the swaying mass with the suggestion that all favoring 
the treaty go to the left, and those opposed to the right. A goodly 
portion of the crowd passed to the right to Trinity Church, and 
Hamilton, assuming that only friends of the treaty remained, be- 


Philpot Curran in his classic defense of the freedom of the press. He was convicted, es- 
cuped, and came to this country. 
1 Gibbs, 1, 217. 2 Pickering, m1, 183. ® Aurora, July 10, 1795. 4 July 6, 1795. 


THE MARCHING MOBS 277 


gan to speak. Hissing — hooting — coughing — his voice was 
drowned. The orator paused, consulted his supporters, and a 
resolution prepared by King was passed to the chairman to read. 
A momentary lull, and then, finding it commendatory of the 
treaty, an angry roar — ‘We'll hear no more of that, tear it up.’ 

Meanwhile, a stone struck Hamilton, without injuring him 
severely. With a derisive smile, he called on ‘all friends of order’ 
to follow him, and the Hamiltonians deserted the field. That 
afternoon at Bowling Green a cheering crowd could have been seen 
burning the treaty, while in the Fields another crowd was scream- 
ing its delight as Jay’s effigy went up in smoke. 

The next day the meeting reconvened and unanimously adopted 
resolutions against the treaty, and the Hamiltonians called a meet- 
ing of the merchants to protest against the action. This meeting 
of the merchants is more impressive in books than it was in reality. 
The ‘Minerva’ announced that the treaty had been endorsed by 
a practically unanimous vote; while the ‘Argus,’ more specific, 
reported that among the seventy present, ten had opposed the 
treaty, and that these ten ‘own more tonnage than the other sixty 
put together.’! The minority of ten publicly denounced the 
majority as ‘either inimical to this country in the late war, or have 
immigrated to this country since that period.’ Having made the 
charge, they entered into details. Of the sixty merchants favoring 
the treaty, only eighteen had been outside the British lines in the 
Revolution, eight had actually joined the British, six came to the 
country from England during the war and located in sections held 
by the British army, and ten entered the country after the war.’ 
At any rate, there were seven thousand people in the mass meeting 
and but seventy in the meeting of the merchants. - 

The ferocity of the protest had a depressing effect on Hamilton, 
who could imagine nothing less than ‘Jacobins meditating serious 
mischief’ to ‘certain individuals.’ Instinctively he thought of 
mobs, and meditated on soldiers to put them down. He was afraid 
the New York militia was sympathetic toward the mob. Time 
would be required for the Federalists to ‘organize a competent 


1 July 23, 1795. 
2 Beard, Economic Origins, 290; Alexander, 79; Argus, July 6, 20, 21, 23; Aurora, July 10, 
22, 23, 1795. 


278 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


armed substitute.’ He had thought of the ‘military now in the 
forts,’ but understood they were ‘under marching orders.’ Would — 
not Wolcott confer confidentially with the Secretary of War and 
‘engage him to suspend the march?’ The majority were against 
the treaty — time to summon the soldiers. Nor was Hamilton 
alone in this thought of force. Ames could see no other way and 
was ready to ‘join the issue tendered.’ The moment was favor- 
able for the Government to show its strength. Then action — 
‘Washington at the head, Pittsburg at its feet, pockets full of 
money, prosperity shining like the sun on its path.’ * Within two 
weeks Hamilton, in the Assembly Room on William Street was 
denouncing the rabble, declaring the situation meant a foreign or 
civil war, and expressing his preference for the latter. Meanwhile 
he was proposing a house-to-house canvass through the wards for 
the treaty.’ 

Ii Hamilton was alarmed in New York, and Pickering chagrined 
in Philadelphia, the Federalist leaders in Massachusetts were 
stunned by the intensity of the feeling of the mob. A protest 
meeting was held at Faneuil Hall, with the venerable Samuel 
Adams participating with spirit. Without a dissenting vote reso- 
lutions were passed denouncing the treaty and praising Senator 
Mason for ‘his patriotism in publishing.’ 4 The aristocratic lead- 
ers of the Federalists in Boston knew the futility of challenging 
the throng. Declining the issue, they busied themselves with the 
merchants and wrote explanatory letters to their friends. ‘Men of 
reputation would not attend the meeting,’ Stephen Higginson, 
the merchant-politician, wrote Pickering, ‘being opposed to the 
town’s taking up the subject. They were left wholly to themselves; 
no attempt was made to counteract them, though nine merchants 
out of ten reprobated the procedure.’ The people, to be sure, were 
excited, for had not Bache been to Boston ‘with a large collection 
of lies of riots in Philadelphia and New York to create a flame 
here.’ > Cabot, more truthful, was lamenting about the same time 
that “some of our most respectable men have on this occasion 
joined the Jacobins and very many of them acquiesced in their 


1 Gibbs (to Wolcott), 1, 218, 2 Ames (to Dwight), 1, 173-75. 
* Argus, August 13, 1795. ¢ Centinel, July 15, 1795. 
5 Pickering, ui, 177. 


THE MARCHING MOBS 279 


proceedings.’ ! Ames could not restrain his disgust because many 
of the rich had participated. Even so, these clever, tireless Massa- 
chusetts leaders were not inactive. After all, what were the 
farmers, artisans, and lawyers compared with the merchants? One 
merchant was more influential with them than a thousand tillers of 
the soil. Thus, they summoned the Chambers of Commerce to 
action, and resolutions were passed endorsing the treaty. “The 
proceedings are to be transmitted to the President,’ wrote the 
complacent Cabot to Wolcott.? 

But that did not end the treaty fight in Boston, for throughout 
the summer the indignation of the people simmered and occa- 
sionally boiled over. The ‘rabble’ had to have its fling. On the 
walls enclosing the home of Robert Treat Paine were chalked the 
words: ‘Damn John Jay! Damn every one who won’t damn John 
Jay! Damn every one who won’t put lights in his windows and sit 
up all night damning John Jay!’* Then, early in September, a 
great crowd marched through the crooked, narrow streets with a 
figure representing Jay; and the next day it reappeared with an- 
other effigy of Jay with a watermelon head, and marched noisily 
through the principal streets to the home of Samuel Adams who 
appeared and smiled approvingly upon the scene. A few days 
later, Jay was burned in effigy at Oliver’s Wharf, and the home of 
the editor of the ‘Federal Orrery’ was attacked with bricks and 
stones.4 ‘The non-participants observed that the Federalist leaders 
were more outraged at the burning of the effigy than over the 
action of a British man-of-war that sailed into the harbor and 
helped itself to anything it wanted. 

Fisher Ames ascribed the mob spirit to ‘a few young men who 
have lost property by British captures.’ Just a few, he said — 
mostly boys with fifes and drums. ‘The anti-treaty men were 
ashamed of the business.’ * The Boston Federalists preferred to 
fight the mob with merchants’ resolutions and their barbed wit. 
‘The reason given by the Jacobins for not reading the treaty,’ 
wrote Russell in the ‘Centinel,’ ‘is that no person ought to read 
what he knows to be bad.’ 7 Meanwhile, the leaders were busy as 


1 King’s Works, u, 18-20. 2 Lodge, Cabot, 84. 
3 Pellew, 282. 4 Federalist Party in Massachusetts, 154-55. 8 Ibid. 
§ Gibbs, 1, 229. 7 August 15, 1795. 


280 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


swarming bees all over Massachusetts, drumming up the mer- 
chants, soliciting resolutions, exerting influence to prevent town 
meetings. ‘At Salem the respectable people are all acquiescent; 
and many of them approve but think it inadvisable to act,’ wrote 
Cabot to Wolcott. ‘At Newburyport, the principal merchants are 
also well satisfied; and some steps have been taken to bring them 
to express their opinions.’ + With the merchants acquiescent, and 
the principal merchants satisfied, need any one worry over the 
marching multitudes? 

But alas, in commercial Charleston, home of the Pinckneys and 
William Smith — there, too, the marching mobs, and mingling 
with them some of the rich and aristocratic. Here was the most 
bitter disappointment of all. It began in the Senate when the 
patrician South Carolina Senator Pierce Butler, cousin of the Duke 
of Ormond, refused to vote for ratification. Nothing of the rabble 
about him or his charming wife. When the treaty reached Charles- 
ton, the flags of the city were lowered to half-mast. The treaty 
was burned ‘amidst shouts of abhorrence’ — nor was there any- 
thing clandestine about the burning. It was duly advertised in 
advance. ‘This evening at 8 o’clock,’ read the notice, ‘will be 
burned by the public executioner near the old Market in Broad 
street, the treaty proposed to be established between Great Britain 
and America to show the disapproval of the citizens of Charleston. 
Also an effigy of Jay will be burned.’ Taking cognizance of rumors 
of possible interference, the ‘satellites of anarchy,’ were promised 
‘tar and feathers.’ These took the hint and both the treaty and 
Jay crackled in the flames. 

Then followed a formal meeting of protest in the Exchange — 
a great crowd — many veterans of the Revolution — an adjourn- 
ment to Saint Michael’s Church to accommodate the throng. 
Then rose a figure familiar to the generation of the Revolution, 
and then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
John Rutledge. An able man was Rutledge, with a luminous 
career. Speaking with vigorous eloquence, analyzing the treaty as 
he proceeded, he denounced it as a betrayal of American interests 
and an insult to American manhood.? At a subsequent meeting 
condemnatory resolutions were adopted, Butler was lauded, and 

1 Lodge, Cabot, 84. 2 Aurora, July 29, 1795. 


THE MARCHING MOBS 281 


Senator Read, who had voted to ratify, was denounced as ‘un- 
worthy of any further public trust.’ ! In the midst of this meeting 
there was a stir of anticipation when the popular orator Charles 
Pinckney, just arrived from his country place and covered with 
dust, strode into the room and claimed recognition. His was one 
of the fiercest excoriations of the year, and a few days later this 
speech, revised, appeared in the ‘City Gazette,’ to be copied by all 
the papers inimical to the treaty in the country. A master of the 
philippic, he poured oil upon the flames.? In parish after parish, 
meetings were called and the treaty denounced. The Federalists 
were appalled at the action of Rutledge, and he who had been 
numbered among ‘the wise and the good’ became a symbol of un- 
speakable depravity over night. It was suddenly discovered that 
he whom Washington had deliberately chosen for Chief Justice 
was ‘insane.’ * In the ‘Centinel’ of Boston appeared an open letter 
to him declaring him unfit to sit upon the Bench — because of 
his hostility to the document of Jay.* The private correspondence 
of the Federalist leaders bristled with abuse, and plans were 
immediately made to reject his nomination in the Senate. 

In North Carolina the opposition was even more bitter, partly 
because of the absurd surrender in Article XII, and partly because 
of the provision which threw the property rights of Americans into 
_ jeopardy.’ This one provision was said to affect half the lands in 
the State, and there was wild talk of resisting it by force. Even 
Senator Johnson, Federalist, was shocked and disgusted. ‘A 
hasty performance’ at best, and one which greatly lowered his 
opinion of Jay’s ability.’ William R. Davie, however, was out- 
raged at the opposition and thought the treatment of Jay meas- 
ured “the baseness of human nature.’ ® 

In Virginia the people were infuriated. They, too, were affected 
by Article IX, and on the day the treaty was signed, Grenville 
presented Jay with papers which began the long litigation over 
the Fairfax estate; and more than any other State she was a 
sufferer from the loss of negroes carried away by the British troops. 
In 1791, Cornwallis had taken thirty thousand slaves, of whom all 


1 Charleston City Gazette, August 1, 1795. 2 Thomas, Reminiscences, 1, 35. 
3 Independent Chronicle, August 17, 1795. 4 August 26, 1795. 
5 Article IX. 6 Giles, 42. 


™McRee, Iredell, u, 450. 8 Iiid., m1, 459. 


282 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


but three thousand had died of smallpox and fever. When a mass 
meeting was convened at Richmond, the Federalist leaders had 
another shock when the celebrated Chancellor Wythe, a powerful 
figure at the American Bar, took the chair — ‘a circumstance,’ 
wrote Madison to Jefferson, ‘which will not be without its weight, 
especially as he presided at the former meeting in favor of the 
Proclamation.’ 1 Here the treaty was denounced as ‘insulting to 
the dignity, injurious to the interests, dangerous to the security, 
and repugnant to the Constitution, of the United States.’ ? Patrick 
Henry thought it ‘a very bad one indeed.’ ? And so thought the 
Virginians generally. At Petersburg a tribute was paid Senator 
Mason and Jay was burned in effigy.‘ 

Still another blow fell to the Federalists when Senator John 
Langdon of New Hampshire, who had supported Hamilton’s 
financial policies, deserted on the treaty. The merchants of Ports- 
mouth — a sacred class with the Hamiltonians — shared in the 
general protest. A mass meeting was called at the State House. 
‘Your only hope is in the President,’ ran the handbills. “Assemble, 
then, to a man; shut up your shops; repair to the State House; 
remonstrate.’ > And never had Portsmouth seen so great a throng. 
The treaty was denounced, Langdon approved, Mason praised 
for giving out the document ‘unduly withheld by the Senate from 
the people.’ When Langdon returned, he was given a public 
dinner at the Assembly Room with practically every merchant 
and tradesman gathered about the board. Stinging toasts, patri- 
otic songs, a stirring speech from Langdon — who at this time 
aligned himself with the Jeffersonians and became their leader in 
New Hampshire.® 

Even so, the Federalists held the line fairly well in New England. 
In Vermont, where the treaty was the sole topic of conversation, 
there were no public meetings. The Democratic Societies of the 
State had fallen under the frown of Washington, and rough-and- 
ready Matthew Lyon had not assumed the leadership. As late as 
September, ‘Vermont Farmer,’ complaining of non-action, urged 
that meetings be called in every town and county — but nothing 


1 Madison’s Writings, m1, 43. 2 Giles, 38. 

3 Henry, Henry, u, 568-71; letter to Mrs. Aylett. 

‘ Argus, July 30, 1795; Gazette of the United States, August 14, 1795. 

8 Argus, July 24, 1795. 6 New Hampshire Gazette, July 21, 1795. 


THE MARCHING MOBS 283 


was done.! In Connecticut, where the preachers, professors, and 
politicians had the people cowed, there was scarcely a whimper. 
‘I have heard little said by our people about the treaty,’ wrote 
Governor Wolcott to his son. ‘Our people are calm and hard at 
work.’ 2 In New Jersey a mass meeting was held at Trenton in the 
State House and the treaty denounced — with numerous town- 
ship meetings following in its wake.’ The sentiment generally was 
hostile. Another meeting at Newport, Rhode Island, and another 
sweeping denunciation.4 In Delaware the opposition was over- 
whelming, even the Cincinnati at its Fourth of July dinner at 
Newcastle drinking heartily to the toast: ‘John Jay, may he enjoy 
all the benefits of purgatory,’ ® while the diners at a more popular 
dinner drank, ‘His Excellency, John Jay...may he and his 
treason be forever politically damned.’ * In August the people of 
Wilmington crowded the Upper Market House in protest, with 
men like Czesar Rodney and John Dickinson participating.’ 

In Georgia, where the popular sense had been betrayed by the 
ratification vote of Senator Gunn, the bitterness was sizzling. One 
day the people gathered about a poster in the Market at Savannah 
inviting them to meet the next day at the Court-House and join 
in the burning of John Jay in effigy. Most of the town responded. 
There they found the effigies of Jay and Gunn on a cart. Forming 
in procession, with the cart in front, they paraded through the 
numerous streets, along the Bay and back to the Court-House, 
and thence to the South Common where the gallows stood. 
Halters were put about the necks of Jay and the offending Senator, 
solemnly the accusation of treason was read to them, and they 
were given to the flames.® 

In Maryland the Federalists whistled hard to sustain their 
courage, and made a brave effort to close their eyes to the situa- 
tion. Representative Murray wrote encouragingly to Wolcott 
that among the men gathered for the General Court ‘nine tenths 

. from all the counties approved the treaty.’ ® In Baltimore the 
merchants rallied and sought to intimidate Sam Smith, their 
Representative, by the circulation of a paper of instructions. He 


1 Spooner’s Vermont Journal, September 11, 1795. 2 Gibbs, 1, 215. 
* Independent Chronicle, August 13 and 27, 1795. 4 Ibid., September 3, 1795, 
5 Argus, July 15, 1795. § Aurora, July 13, 1795. 


1 Argus, August 14, 1795. 8 Ibid., August 8, 1795. § Gibbs, 1, 249, 


284. JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


hastened home to suppress it, and failing, had a set of counter- 
instructions started. But there was no magic in pretense, and 
soon Murray, himself intimidated, was writing of his decision to 
retire with the admission that on the Eastern Shore there ‘had 
been more agitation than I had imagined.’ } 


IV 


These marching mobs, mass meetings, resolutions and petitions, 
and burning effigies give no conception of the popular ferment. 
Never had the people been more agitated or outraged. When- 
ever two men met, whether bankers or bakers, the treaty was the 
topic of their talk. In taverns, where travelers were promiscuously 
packed like sardines in a box, the quarreling made night hideous 
and sleep impossible. In the bar-rooms, men, in their cups, dis- 
puted and fought. The stage-coaches were a forum, the crossroads 
store a battle-ground. An English tourist, finding himself in a 
wayside tavern, was driven to distraction by the noise of combat. 
The farmers were against the treaty, the lawyers for it, and they 
debated with passion, with more heat than light. Assigned to a 
room with five or six beds, the forlorn foreigner was forced to 
listen to the continuance of the struggle until at length ‘sleep 
closed their eyes and happily their mouths at the same time.’ ? 
The Duc de la Liancourt, journeying through upper New York, 
was swept into the maelstrom of controversy and had to record 
his own opinions in his ‘Travels.’ ? When the messenger from the 
Boston mass meeting reached New York, hurrying to Philadelphia, 
Greenleaf stopped his press to print the story of the incident.‘ 
Soon the anti-treaty press was publishing statistics on public 
sentiment — the mass meetings against the select gatherings of the 
merchants. Fifteen thousand people had met and denounced the 
treaty, and seven hundred had approved it, according to the 
‘Independent Chronicle.’ 5 

Meanwhile, Washington was causing the Federalists some un- 
easiness. As late as July 31st, he had written Pickering evincing 
a desire to know public sentiment. Had the Jacobins captured 
Washington? Wolcott was painfully depressed lest America lose 


1 Steiner, 194-95. 2 Weld, 1, 102-03. § Liancourt, u, 79. 
4 Argus, July 16, 1795. & September 3, 1795. 


THE MARCHING MOBS 285 


the respect of England. What would she think with their ‘Minis-. 
ter’s house insulted by a mob, their flag dragged through the 
streets as in Charleston ...a driveler and a fool appointed Chief 
Justice’ by Washington?! Only the day before, Washington was 
writing of his alarm lest France resent a treaty she had some right 
to resent.2 Clearly Washington required some attention. 


Vv 


‘The President held the treaty seven weeks before signing, and 
this put the Federalist leaders to the torture. Among themselves 
they made no concealment of their chagrin and indignation. Cabot, 
writing to King, confessed that the President’s hesitation ‘renews 
my anxiety for the welfare of the country.’ He would suggest to 
the Boston merchants that they make ‘a manly declaration of 
their sentiments’ to Washington. He had ‘too much respect for 
the character of the President to believe that he can be deterred 
from his duty by the clamor or menaces of these city mobs,’ but 
he realized that something should be done to counteract their in- 
fluence.? If Cabot kept a rein on his patience, it was not true of all. 
In a great house known as ‘Elmwood’ at Windsor, Connecticut, 
surcounded by elm trees and filled with books and religion, a stern 
and forceful master was literally walking the floor, and tossing 
restlessly on a sleepless bed, for Oliver Ellsworth was doubting 
Washington’s firmness and courage. In bitterness he was writing 
that ‘if the President decides right or wrong or does not decide 
soon his good fortune will forsake him.’ 4 In commercial circles in 
New York many were already turning upon the man they made a 
virtue of pretending to worship. About the middle of July, Wash- 
ington and his family left Philadelphia for Mount Vernon, he ina 
two-horse phaéton for one, his family in a coach with four horses 
and two servants, another servant leading a saddle horse — and 
without giving the slightest intimation of his intention.’ 

Then came the scandal involving Randolph and the French 
Minister Faucet. There was infinite joy in the Federalist camp. 
Pickering and Randolph hastened a summons to Washington to 
return. There was a dramatic scene, in which Washington is 


1 Gibbs, 1, 219-20. 2 Pickering, m1, 185, * King’s Works, un, 20-21. 
4 Brown, Ellsworth, 219-20. 5 Hiltzheimer, 215. 


286 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


described as winking at Pickering, and setting a trap for his 
Secretary of State, who was the sole member of his original 
Cabinet chosen by the President to please himself. Randolph was 
dismissed —and Washington signed the treaty. The merits of the 
treaty were In no wise affected by anything Randolph may have 
done, and it is fair to assume that there was no connection between 
the disgracing of the Secretary and the signing.1 The strategy of 
the Federalist now outlined itself, and Washington became the 
treaty and the treaty became Washington, and to oppose the 
treaty was to insult Washington. The popular President was 
literally pushed to the front line in the fight. Pickering was writ- 
ing Jay suggesting that Washington be persuaded to issue ‘a 
solemn public declaration...of the principles of his Adminis- 
tration,’ appealing to the record of his life ‘for the purity and 
patriotism of his conduct’; ? and Jay was replying that while ‘in 
many respects useful,’ he doubted the wisdom.? Christopher Gore 
was writing King inquiring if it were not ‘possible for Col. Hamil- 
ton and yourself to induce the President to adopt some measures 


- that would decidedly express his sentiments in favor of the treaty.’ 


He was positive that ‘in New England the word of the President 
would save the Government.’ 4 

This plan of using the prestige of Washington for a party 
measure was not made for this particular occasion. Pickering and 
Gore wrote on the same day,® one from Philadelphia, and the 
other from Boston. It had long been a favorite feature in the party 
strategy. Ellsworth regained his composure and wrote Wolcott 
that ‘the current I believe is turning in Massachusetts, though 
you may perhaps hear of some obscure town meetings.’ ® Senator 
James Ross, writing to Pickering from Pittsburgh, thought that 
after all it was well that Washington had taken his time. ‘His 
sanction after hearing all the objections will quiet the minds of the 
thoughtful.’ 7 

All that was required to make Washington the issue in the 
treaty fight was a stupid attack upon him from the Democratic 
press, and that was instantly forthcoming. When Fenno’s paper 


1 For Randolph incident, Pickering, 11, 213-14 and 216-19; Lodge, Cabot, 91-94. 
2 Pickering, m1, 196. 8 Iiid., 197. 

‘King’s Works, 11, 24. 5 August 14. 

6 Brown, Ellsworth, 220-21. t Pickering, m1, 199. 


THE MARCHING MOBS 287 


announced that the treaty had been signed, Bache wrote that 
since ‘no information has been filed for a libel on the Executive... 
it may be fairly presumed, the character of the President for 
patriotism and republicanism notwithstanding, that the assertion 
is well founded.’ And when a great crowd attended the next 
presidential levee, Bache capped the climax of asininity with the 
comment that ‘it was certainly necessary to let the public know 
that the just resentment of an injured and insulted people had not 
reached the purview of Saint Washington.’? These bitter ex- 
pressions convinced the Federalists that the fight was not yet over. 
The public had too bitterly and generally resented the treaty to 
be so quickly won. Instinctively the friends of the treaty thought 
of Hamilton and the prowess of his pen. ‘Mr. Hamilton might do 
great good,’ wrote Murray of Maryland to Wolcott, “by giving the 
public his luminous pen.’ ? Even as Murray wrote, Hamilton sat 
in his office writing ‘Camillus’ for Noah Webster’s paper. His 
health was failing at the time, but King and Jay had promised to 
assist. For weeks and months the papers appeared, thirty-eight 
in all, in the most effective argumentative style, covering every 
possible phase. ‘It is to pass for Hamilton’s,’ wrote John Adams 
to his wife, ‘but all three consulted together upon most.’ * Two 
months after the series began, the enemies of the treaty were 
circulating the story that Hamilton and Webster had quarreled 
because of the latter’s decision to limit the number of papers. 
‘More than a hundred columns have already been run, to the ex- 
clusion of news, and the people are tired, no doubt,’ suggested an 
editor.® 

Unhappily, while Hamilton wrote, England was up to her old 
tricks upon the sea again. Scarcely had the treaty been ratified, 
when Pickering was officially protesting against an outrage on the 
United States by the British ship of the line Africa, and by the 
British Vice-Consul in Rhode Island,* and was writing complain- 
ingly to John Quincy Adams in London that ‘if Britain studied to 
keep up the irritation in the minds of Americans . . . some of her 
naval commanders appear perfectly qualified for the object.’ ’ 


1 Aurora, August 21, 1795. 4 Ibid., August 22, 1795. 
8 Gibbs, 1, 222. 4 King’s story. 
8’ Aurora, November 17, 1795. * Pickering, 11, 231-39. 7 Ihid., m1, 239. 


RT 


288 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON) 


The enemies of the treaty made the most of these affronts. ‘A 
Loyalist of ’75’ was urging Hamilton to ‘discontinue his laborious 
work of defending the treaty’ to give some attention to the justi- 
fication of Captain Home of the Africa, and to the defense of the 
other sea captain who stole a peep ‘at Mr. Monroe’s despatches.’ 
‘Camillus’ could resume on the treaty after quieting ‘the minds of 
the swinish multitude’ on these later outrages. Thus Hamilton’s 
efforts were being constantly neutralized in effect by the conduct 
of the English, and the ‘swinish multitude’ chortled not a little 
over the doggerel: 

‘Sure George the Third will find employ 

For one so wise and wary, 


He’ll call “Camillus” home with joy, 
And make him Secretary.’ # 


In truth, even as he wrote, Hamilton was raging not a little over 
these stupid insults to America, and was writing Wolcott proposing 
that the exchange of ratifications be refused until the order to 
seize our vessels with provisions be rescinded.? 

Far away on his hilltop, Jefferson was observing Hamilton’s 
literary efforts with real concern, if the rank and file of his party 
were not. “Hamilton is really a colossus to the anti-republican 
party,’ he wrote Madison, apropos of the defense of the treaty. 
‘Without numbers, he is a host within himself. They have got 
themselves into a defile where they can be finished; but too much 
security on the republican part will give time to his talent... to 
extricate them. ... When he comes forward there is no one but 
yourself who can meet him. For God’s sake take up your pen and 
give a fundamental reply to Curtius and Camillus.’ 4 But neither 
‘for God’s sake,’ nor for Jefferson’s, did Madison comply. He was 
enjoying his vacation with Dolly. Even so, the Federalists were 
still in the woods on the treaty — and there was yet a memorable 
fight ahead. 


* VArgus, August 15, 1795. § Ibid., August 27, 1795. 
* Hamilton’s Works, x, 113-14. 4 Jefferson’s Works, rx, 309-11. 


CHAPTER XIII 
THE DRAMA OF ’96 


I 


XUBERANT over their success in capitalizing Washington’s 
consent to the treaty, the Federalists returned to Phila- 
delphia in an ugly mood. With celerity and éclat, the Senate threw 
down the gauntlet with the rejection of the nomination of John 
Rutledge because of his hostility to the treaty. The motive was 
unescapable. He was an able jurist, an erudite lawyer, a pure 
patriot with a superb record of high public services — but he had 
denounced the Federalist treaty. That was enough. The leaders 
were delighted with their action, Senator Johnson thinking it 
would have been unfortunate to have permitted Rutledge to re- 
main upon the Bench ‘after what had appeared.’ Of course, the 
opposition would ‘endeavor to impress it upon the minds of the 
people that the majority were influenced by improper motives,’ 
but that was unavoidable.! Jefferson viewed the incident from his 
hilltop with the vision of a prophet. ‘A bold thing,’ he thought, 
‘because they cannot pretend any objection to him but his dis- 
approbation of the treaty.’ It meant that the Federalists ‘would 
receive none but Tories hereafter into any department of the 
government,’ and it would not be surprising were Monroe recalled 
from Paris because ‘of his being of the partisans of France.’ 
Monticello was remote, but its master could see a long way.? 
The Senate still seemed safe to the Federalists on their return, 
but there were grave misgivings as to the House. Young Living- 
ston had caused trouble enough and he was back to give more than 
Ames ‘the hypo,’ but more ominous was the appearance there for 
the first time of Albert Gallatin. He had been thrown out of the 
Senate as speedily as possible, but not before he had given proof of 
his financial genius. There, the Jeffersonians had been weak in 
leadership. It was characteristic of the inner circle of the Fed- 
eralists to hate any opponent they could not despise — and they 
1 McRee, Iredell, 1, 459. 2 Jefferson’s Works (to Giles), rx, 314-18. 


290 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


dare not despise this young man from Geneva. Even in private 
life he had been denounced and damned in the spirit of the pot- 
house, and Hamilton had ardently hoped for his indictment in con- 
nection with the Whiskey Insurrection. When his election had 
seemed probable, an effort had actually been made to disfranchise 
his district as a region of sedition — but here was Gallatin. A duel 
between Gallatin’s father-in-law, Admiral Nicholson, and Ham- 
ilton had been narrowly averted in the autumn; but Gallatin, rising 
serenely above his detractors, had refused to be ruffled, and had 
advised his wife not to express her sentiments on the treatment 
accorded him too hotly lest it ‘lead to consequences you would 
forever regret.’ ! Since these two brilliant, bitterly hated, and 
violently abused men, Livingston and Gallatin, were to play con- 
spicuous parts in the drama of the House, it is worth while to pause 
for a more intimate impression of them. 


II 


‘Edward Livingston now lives here in the style of a nabob,’ 
wrote Wolcott during this session.? It was a style to which he had 
been accustomed from birth, for he was of the baronial aristocracy 
of New York. He was but thirty-two at the time, tall, handsome, 
dashing and daring, witty and eloquent, and with a luminous back- 
ground of wealth, culture, tradition, and personal achievement. 
Even the most inveterate snob among his political opponents must 
have envied him his advantages. Born in the mansion of the Liv- 
ingstons at ‘Clermont,’ on the Hudson, he had passed his winters 
in the town house in New York, which swarmed with slave serv- 
ants. From boyhood, his society had been eagerly sought. With 
his fleeing mother he had witnessed from a hilltop his loved home 
given to the flames by British soldiers; and to his dying day he 
carried a poignant memory of the parting of his sister with her 
hero husband, Richard Montgomery, when he set forth for his 
final fight. Lafayette had been so captivated by the charming 
youth while visiting his home that he had vainly importuned his 
mother for permission to take him to France; and when the young 
man attended the Marquis a way on the Boston road, so romantic 
was the attachment that the latter had urged the youth to make 

1 Adams, Gallatin, 152. $ Gibbs (to Goodrich), 1, 303, 


THE DRAMA OF ’96 291 


the journey, nevertheless, with the promise to conciliate the fam- 
ily. His was a unique charm, a fascinating personality. 

Graduating from Princeton, in the class with Giles, he had his 
choice between a life of laborious accomplishment and one of lei- 
surely elegance. Society, the gayest, giddiest, most entrancing, 
held forth its arms to him. His mother’s drawing-room was 
always crowded with brilliant and beautiful women and clever 
men, attracted partly by the exquisite charms of the widow of 
Montgomery. He had an income, a town and country house, 
slaves to do his bidding, and he turned from the enticing prospect 
to bury himself in the assiduous study of the law. Now and then 
he laid his books aside to flirt with Theodosia Burr, to dance with 
the pretty belles, to play for stakes with women at the gambling- 
table inseparable from the more fashionable houses — but only as 
a diversion. 

Searcely had he begun the practice of his profession when he 
took a commanding position. Hard work, a noble ambition, and 
native talent made him a success. But he could not have been a 
Livingston and indifferent to politics. Very early his capacity and 
popularity swept him into the fight. Strangely enough, he 1m- 
mediately became the idol of the masses. This aristocrat was a 
democrat who was able to move in the crowd with a distinction 
that commauded respect while compelling affection. Perhaps the 
artisans, the clerks, the lowly were flattered by his smile and con- 
descension, perhaps captivated by his fighting mettle — whatever 
the cause, they loved him, gathered about and sustained him. 
The Tammany of his time marshaled its forces for him, and all the 
wit and wiles of Hamilton could not harm him. But the Federal- 
ists hated him. What moral right had a man of wealth and intel- 
lectual distinction and social prestige to affiliate with the ‘mob’? 
They hated him as deserters are hated — he was an American 
Egalité to Mrs. Bingham’s drawing-room, and Wolcott hated him 
less because he ‘lived like a nabob’ than because he fought like the 
devil.! 


1 The second phase of his remarkable career is treated in the author’s Party Battles of 
the Jackson Period. 


292 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


III 


Quite a different type was Albert Gallatin — and yet both were 
born aristocrats. From the beginning of the republic at Geneva in 
the sixteenth century, his family had been second to none in pres- 
tige and power. The governmental system was aristocratic; his 
people were uncompromising aristocrats, and five Gallatins had 
been, at one time or another, head of the State. Into this re- 
actionary atmosphere he was born, and in it he passed his youth. 
At the home of his grandmother, a domineering but clever old 
autocrat, who believed in the divine right of the aristocracy to 
rule, he often met Voltaire. Strange couple, that old woman wor- 
shiping tradition, and that cynical old philosopher sneering it 
away. And yet in his family Gallatin was an exotic. Instinctively 
he despised the system his people thought sacred. Rousseau may 
have influenced him, but he was probably born with democracy in 
his blood. When his grandmother arranged to get him a commis- 
sion in the mercenary army of her friend the Landgrave of Hess, 
and he scornfully refused on the ground that he would ‘never 
serve a tyrant,’ the old woman boxed his ears — but without jar- 
ring his principles. He was a grave disappointment in the family 
circle. It is a notable coincidence that like Hamilton he was re- 
markably precocious. He graduated from the Academy of Geneva 
in his seventeenth year, first in his class in mathematics, natural 
philosophy, and Latin translation. There, too, he had studied his- 
tory under Miiller, the eminent historian, and in the facts and 
philosophy of world history he was to have no equal in American 
public life. Nothing contributed more to his desertion of his coun- 
try than his hatred of its petty aristocracy, its autocratic rule. 

He was a dreamer in his youth. Was it Rousseau who planted 
in him a dislike of cities and a passion for the wilderness? Secretly 
he left Geneva and came to America, landing in Boston. He car- 
ried a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin to his son-in- 
law, the father of the editor of ‘The Aurora’ at Philadelphia. A 
few dreary months in Boston, a happier winter in a cabin in the 
wilderness of northern Maine, a year at Harvard as a teacher of 
French, a short time in Philadelphia in a boarding-house with 

1 Adams, Gallatin, 17. 


THE DRAMA OF ’96 293 


Pelatiah Webster, the political philosopher, and the lure of land 
speculation led him to Virginia. There, in Richmond, some of his 
happiest days were passed. Society was courteous, kindly, and 
there he came in contact with great minds. John Marshall invited 
him into his office with the prediction that he would distinguish 
himself at the Bar, and Patrick Henry advised him to go West, 
with the observation that he was intended for statesmanship. At 
this time he was a youth of twenty-one with a pronounced foreign 
accent. Washington met him, and, impressed with his keenness, | 
offered to make him his land agent — an honor happily declined. — 
Then into the wilderness of Pennsylvania; a house on a hilltop 
which he called ‘Friendship Hill’; a domestic tragedy — the death 
of his young wife; and soon the Whiskey Boys, keen of vision as 
Marshall, Henry, or Washington, literally swept him into public 
life. : 

He was primarily a democrat and an opponent of strong govern- 
ment. Fascinated by the work of the Constitutional Convention, 
he thought the Executive had been given too much power. But he 
was opposed to tinkering with constitutions once adopted.’ As a 
member of the convention to revise the Constitution of Pennsyl- 
vania, he worked as earnestly as had Madison in the greater con- 
vention, fighting with moderation, but persistence for a popular 
government, for the freedom of the press, and popular suffrage. 
It is significant that when the subject of courts was reached he 
sought the advice of John Marshall — and received it.’ His views 
on the French Revolution were those of Jefferson. He recognized 
the many excesses, the greed of demagogues for power, and he did 
not expect ‘a very good government within a short time,’ but he 
knew ‘their cause to be that of mankind against tyranny’ and that 
‘no foreign nation has the right to dictate a government to them.’ 3 
One glance at Genét revealed to him the naked man — ‘totally 
unfit for the place he fills,’ his abilities ‘slender.’4 Yet, like Jef- 
ferson, despite the massacres in Paris and the Genét excesses in 
Philadelphia, he clung to France because, ‘if France is annihilated, 
as seems to be the desire of the combined powers, sad indeed will 
the consequences be for America.’ > If he opposed the Excise Law, 


1 Adams, Gallatin, 80. 2 [bid., 81. 8 Ibid., 103-04. 
¢ [bid., 111. | 6 Ibid., 113. 


294 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


as was his right, he had a reason, and it was sane.1 The charge the 
Federalists were to make, that he had incited the hard-pressed 
pioneers to violations of the law, was maliciously false. Through- 
out that insurrection, his part was hard, and he met it with sanity 
and courage. 

This was the background of this remarkable man when, at the 
age of thirty-five, he stepped forward with the confidence of a vet- 
eran to assume the intellectual leadership of the Jeffersonians in 
the House. A shy man in social relations, he was utterly fearless in 
debate. There was no mind in that body so well stocked with facts, 
and none with a broader vision or deeper penetration. There was 
no one more masterful in logic, more clear, downright, incisive in 
statement, and none more impervious to abuse. His was the dig- 
nity of a superior mentality. If his foreign accent was still pro- 
nounced, and members, priding themselves on their refinement 
and taste, sneered openly, he remained the perfect gentleman, 
‘indifferent to such jeers. In the midst of excitement, he was calm. 
When others were demoralized, he kept his head. No greater 
figure ever stood upon the floor of an American Congress than 
when Albert Gallatin appeared, to force notable reforms in the 
fiscal system, and to challenge the Federalists to an intellectual 
combat that would call forth their extreme exertions. 


IV 


One of the most important and brilliant debates in American 
history, surpassing that on the Foote Resolutions, was precipi- 
tated early in March when Edward Livingston threw a bomb into 
the complacent camp of the Federalists with resolutions calling 
upon the President to lay before the House the instructions and 
papers pertaining to the Jay Treaty. There was some maneuver- 
ing in the beginning to feel out the position of the enemy, and then 
the members settled down to a month of memorable debating. 
On the whole, the discussion was pitched upon a high plane, for 
the question was one of constitutional interpretation. Throughout, 
there was scarcely a touch of personalities, albeit Tracy, described 
by his admirers as the ‘Burke of Connecticut,’ and by his enemies 
as the ‘Burke of Connecticut without his intelligence,’ could not 

1 Adams, Gallatin, 88; Writings, 1, 3-4. 


THE DRAMA OF 96 295 


restrain a stupid sneer at the accent of Galiatin who led for the 
enemies of the treaty. A Pennsylvania member denounced 
Tracy’s vulgar conduct as ‘intolerable,’ and there were many 
cries of ‘order.’ With the brazen effrontery of his school, Tracy 
asked Speaker Dayton to decide, and that rather disreputable 
speculator, if not peculator, held it in order to insult Gallatin with 
impunity.! But this incident was happily unique. 

The Livingston Resolutions were based upon the theory that 
the House was a party to the treaty in that it would be asked to 
make appropriations to carry it into effect, and that the facts were 
necessary to the determination of its course. This was in perfect 
accord with the position of Jefferson.2 The Federalists contended 
that the President and Senate alone were officially concerned, and 
that the House was obligated to carry out any financial arrange- 
ments entered into in a treaty. Did not the Constitution specifi- 
cally say that the treaty-making power was lodged in the Presi- 
dent and the Senate? Conceded, replied the opposition, but the 
Constitution also said that money bills must originate in the 
House, and in making appropriations for any purpose the popular 
branch of Congress is constitutionally bound to use its own dis- 
cretion. Both sides could, and did, appeal to the Constitution. 
There was nothing merely factious or obstructive in the fight of 
the opposition, and it is impossible to peruse the seven hundred 
and nine pages of the debates without a realization of the com- 
plete sincerity of the participants. Into the debate dashed all the 
leaders of the first order. The galleries were packed. The discus- 
sion was the sole conversational topic in streets and coffee-houses. 
The newspapers printed the leading speeches in full. Even the 
Federal courts injected themselves into the controversy, and one 
jurist introduced a denunciation of the enemies of the treaty into 
his charge to the grand jury.’ Fenno stupidly stumbled into the 
blunder of proving the opponents of the treaty a ‘Robespierre 
faction’ by quoting the London ‘Morning Chronicle,’ ‘4 and 
Cobbett, the Englishman and Federalist pamphleteer, selected 
this particular time to outrage the Philadelphia ‘rabble’ by filling 


1 Annals, April 27, 1796. 2 Jefferson’s Works, rx, 328-29; to Monroe. 

8 Judge Jonathan Elmer, Cumberland, New Jersey, Gazette of the United States, March 12, 
1796. 

4 Gazette of the United States, March 26, 1796, 


296 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


his windows with pictures of kings, queens, princes, dukes, Pitt, 
Grenville, and George III. With studied insolence, he added some 
portraits of American Revolutionary heroes, and ‘found out fit 
companions for them.’ Thus he ‘coupled Franklin with Marat’ 
and ‘M’Kean and Ankerstrom.’ 4 

The burden of the debate was borne by Gallatin, Madison, Liv- 
ingston, and Giles for the Resolutions, and by Sedgwick and Gris- 
wold against them. Livingston spoke with spirited eloquence and 
with that power of reasoning which was afterward to compel his 
recognition as one of the foremost political thinkers of his time.” 
Giles sustained his reputation as a fluent, forceful, slashing de- 
bater. Madison spoke with moderation; but the honors of primacy 
fell to Gallatin. He was a revelation, and the Federalists were be- 
side themselves with rage. Tall, and above medium size, his fine 
face aglow with intelligence, his black eyes burning with earnest- 
ness, his profile resembling in its sharp outlines that of a French- 
man, his accent foreign, his delivery slow and a little embarrassed, 
he spoke with a clarity and force that made the Federalists wince. 
Livingston was more showy, Giles more boisterous, Madison more 
academic. This new man was another Madison with greater 
punch.’ He did not wander a moment from his argument — the 
constitutional rights of the House in the case of treaties involving 
appropriations. 

“The House has a_right to ask for papers,’ he said, ‘because 
their codperation and sanction is necessary to carry the Treaty 
into full effect, to render it a binding instrument, and to make it, 
properly speaking, a law of the land; because they have a full dis- 
cretion to either give or refuse that codperation; because they 
must be guided in the exercise of that discretion by the merits and 
expediency of the Treaty itself, and therefore they have a right to 
ask for every information which can assist them in deciding that 
question.” Whence led the argument of the foes of the Resolu- 
tions? “The Constitution says that no money shall be drawn from 
the Treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law. 
But treaties, whatever provisions they may contain, are law; ap- 
propriations may therefore be made by treaties. Then the short- 


1 Melville, Cobbett, 1, 101-02. 2 Annals, March 11, 1796. 
* Familiar Letters, 108; Twining, Travels, 51-5&, 


THE DRAMA OF ’96 297 


est way to carry this treaty into effect would have been to add 
another article appropriating the money.’ Turning to the power 
of the House of Commons in the case of treaties involving an ap- 
propriation, he found an analogy to the constitutional power of the 
President and the Senate, in the power of the King to make trea- 
ties. But no one in England challenged the right of the Commons 
to appropriate or not in putting the provisions of a treaty into 
effect — and the speaker cited instances where the Commons had 
rejected treaties by refusing appropriations. ‘Are we in a worse 
situation than Great Britain?’ he asked. ‘Is the House of Repre- 
sentatives...the immediate representatives of the American 
people ranked below the British House of Commons? Shall the 
Legislative power be swallowed up by the Treaty-making power 
as contended for here, though never claimed even in Great Brit- 
ain?’ ‘The issue raised by the opposition to the Resolutions was 
clear, and their rejection would be ‘tantamount to saying that the 
House abandons their share in legislation, and consents that the 
whole power shall be centered in the other branches.’ 

Such, in general, was the tenor of the argument for the Resolu- 
tions; while the Federalists insisted that the House possessed no 
power to refuse any appropriation called for by a treaty — and 
thus the discussion went round and round like a. wagon wheel 
in motion. Sedgwick, in justifying the Senate’s power, made a 
blunder on which the supporters of the Resolutions seized and 
with which they played throughout the discussion. The Senators 
were safer than the Representatives, he thought, because the 
former were not chosen by ‘an ignorant herd, who could be ca- 
joled, flattered, and deceived.’ 

At length the vote was taken, and the Resolutions adopted by 
61 to 38. Gallatin and Livingston, chosen by the House, person- 
ally presented the call for the papers to Washington, who pro- 
mised an answer after consideration. An answer, sneered Bache, 
which sounds like that which the King of France used to give to 
his subjects. 


Vv 
When Livingston introduced his Resolutions, Hamilton, in New 
York, was momentarily at sea. His first impression was that they 
1 Aurora, March 28, 1796, 


298 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


were ‘of doubtful propriety.’?! Within a few days, after discus- 
sions with ‘those who think,’ he was persuaded that the papers 
should be refused — possibly on the ground that no purpose could 
be served unless impeachment proceedings against Washington 
were in contemplation.? Here we have, in a flash, the political 
strategy outlined — to convince the people that the Jeffersonians 
were planning the expulsion of Washington from office. Again the 
Federalist war-cry — ‘Stand by the President!’ But a week later, 
Hamilton wrote King that the papers should be refused on the 
ground that the House had nothing to do with treaties, and that 
they were laws of the land to which the House had to conform.’ 
Learning of the adoption of the Resolutions, Hamilton wrote 
Washington to refuse compliance and to await suggestions that 
would be sent the next day.4 Two days later, he was mortified at 
his inability to send the promised papers, but he was at work upon 
them. Meanwhile, the papers should not be sent because the in- 
structions to Jay would ‘do no credit to the Administration.’ Some 
would disappoint and inflame the people.’ Two days after this, 
Washington sent his reply to the House, following Hamilton’s 
instructions and using some of his phraseology, even to the con- 
venient suggestion of an impeachment.’ The House, with equal 
firmness and with a dignified moderation, responded with resolu- 
tions reaffirming its right — and the issue was made.’ Almost 
immediately the introduction of a resolution providing the ap- 
propriation threw the House into another month’s battle, on the 
treaty itself. 


VI 


Up to this time the congressional struggle had caused little ex- 
citement among the people. Now the idea that the Union itself 
was at stake was assiduously put out by the Federalist leaders. 
The Senate practically ceased to function. When Senator Taze- 
well called attention to the accumulation of business and urged 
action, King bluntly told him it was purposely held back, and that 
if the House failed to appropriate for the treaty, the Senate would 


1 Hamilton’s Works (to Wolcott), x, 145. 2 Thid., 145-46. 8 Ibid., 151. 
4 Ibid., 152. 5 Ibid., 152-54. 6 Annals, March 30, 1796. 
7 Annals, April 6, 1796. The vote was 57 to 36. 


f 


THE DRAMA OF ’96 299 


consider all legislation at an end, and he would assume the Union 
dissolved. The next day Cabot expressed something of the same 
sentiment. In important commercial circles there was much loose 
talk of the dissolution of the Union. 

The action of Washington, on the other hand, had aroused re- 
sentment and disgust. Jefferson, with his usual prescience, had 
foreseen it while hoping against it. ‘I wish that his honesty and 
his political errors may not furnish a second occasion to exclaim, 
“curse on his virtues, they have undone his country,’ he had 
written of Washington to Madison three days before the refusal 
was sent to Congress.! Madison thought the tone and temper of 
the presidential letter ‘improper and indelicate,’ and suggested 
that Jefferson compare it with ‘one of Callimus’ last numbers... 
and the latter part of Murray’s speech.’? It was reserved to 
Bache, as usual, to strike the harsh note. ‘Thus though his de- 
cision could not be influenced by the voice of the people, he could 
suffer it to be moulded by the opinion of an ex-Secretary,’ he 
wrote. ‘Thus... though he has apparently discharged the nurse, 
he is still in leading strings.’ 

Meanwhile, the attacks on the Treaty were spreading consterna- 
tion in all commercial quarters and infuriating the Federalist lead- 
ers. ‘A most important crisis ensues,’ wrote Hamilton to King a 
week after the debate opened; and he outlined a plan of action in 
the event the appropriations were refused. The President should 
send a solemn protest to the House and a copy to the Senate. That 
body should pass a resolution strongly commending the protest 
and advising the President to proceed with the execution of the 
Treaty. Then the merchants should meet in all the cities, adopt 
resolutions commendatory of the position of the President and 
Senate, and invite their fellow citizens to codperate with them. 
Petitions should be circulated throughout the country. The 
Senate should refuse to adjourn until the terms of the members of 
the House had expired. Washington should send a confidential 
apology to England. ‘The glory of the President, the safety of the 
Constitution depend upon it. Nothing will be wanting here.’ ® 

Hamilton immediately set his machinery in motion, and thus, 


1 Jefferson’s Works, 1x, 330-31. 8 Madison’s Writings, 1, 89-91. 
8 Hamilton’s Works, x, 157. 


300 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


while the debate was at high tide in the House, the political leaders 
were busy with the country. King had written of the alarm of the 
merchants in Philadelphia. ‘Our merchants here are not less 
alarmed and will do all they can,’ Hamilton replied. Arrange- 
ments had been made for the insurance people to meet that day; 
the merchants and traders would meet the next. A petition would 
be put in circulation.!. Two days later, he wrote jubilantly of the 
action of the merchants. ‘Unexampled unanimity,’ he said. And 
more — ‘persons to-day are going through the different wards’ — 
presumably with petitions.? That very day he was writing Wol- 
cott that ‘the British Ministry are as great fools or as great rascals 
as our Jacobins, else our commerce would not continue to be dis- 
tressed as it is, with their cruisers.’ 3 

The very day that Hamilton was writing of the distress of the 
New York merchants, Madison was writing to Jefferson of the 
plans of the Democrats. While a merchants’ petition had been 
circulated in Philadelphia, he promised that ‘an adverse petition 
wil be signed by three or four times’ as many people. In New 
York and Boston similar petitions would be put out. In Baltimore 
little could be expected, for there, while originally against the 
treaty, they had been won over ‘by the hope of indemnification for 
past losses.’ * Five days later, he reported progress. The Phila- 
delphia petition against the treaty greatly outnumbered that for it, 
and petitions were being circulated in Delaware and New Jersey. 
The insurance companies in Philadelphia and New York were 
seeking to intimidate the people by stopping business. The banks 
had been active peddlers of petitions in the cities where there was 
“scarce a trader or merchant but what depends on discounts.’ A 
hateful picture, thought Madison. ‘Bank Directors soliciting 
subscriptions are like highwaymen with a pistol demanding the 
purse.’ > 

Boston found the Federalists triumphant in a town meeting 
dominated by the eloquence of Otis, who played upon the horrors 
of war, and thus gave Ames and the other party leaders their cue. 
It was on this occasion that the orator, who had studied French 
under Gallatin at Harvard, and been treated kindly, referred to the 


1 Hamilton’s Works, x, 160. 2 Ibid., 161. 3 Ibid., 161-62, 
4 Madison’s Writings, u1, 95. 5 Iind., 98. 


THE DRAMA OF ’96 801 


latter sneeringly as a nobody who had come to America without a 
second shirt on his back. Later, to the disgust of his Federalist co- 
workers, he had the decency to apologize to Gallatin.’ Every- 
where the latter was being deluged with billingsgate. There was 
not contempt here — there was hate. Noah Webster, in the 
‘Minerva,’ was sneering at his foreign birth, while taking his cue 
from Hamilton, born in the West Indies; attacking his position on 
the excise with falsehoods and innuendoes; charging him with 
being an agent of France. Adams, of the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ 
replied with a parody, substituting Hamilton for Gallatin and 


England for France and making as good sense.” Wolcott was , :\: 


writing his father that it was ‘neither unreasonable nor uncandid’ 
to believe that Mr. Gallatin is directed by foreign politics and in- 
fluence.’ * Nothing could have pained the sensitive Wolcott more 
than the feeling that he was being uncandid. 

Meanwhile, the fight in the House went on — Gallatin in the 
forefront. The Federalists were thoroughly frightened over the 
prospect, resorting to every device to gain votes. Dreadful pic- 
tures of war if the treaty failed, appeals to ‘stand by Washington,’ 
and intimidation — these were favorite devices. ‘I am told,’ wrote 
Wolcott, with evident pleasure, ‘that if Findlay and Gallatin don’t 
ultimately vote for their [treaties’] execution, their lives will be 
scarcely spared.’ 4 But frightened and afraid of a vote, they de- 
cided ‘to risk the consequences of a delay, and prolong the debates 
in expectation of an impulse from some of the districts on their 
representatives.’ > However, a vote could not be indefinitely de- 
layed. Public business was at a standstill. Everything possible 
had been done. The bankers had been sent out with petitions to 
their creditors. The insurance companies had stopped business. 
The merchants had passed resolutions. Petitions had been circu- 
lated. Washington’s glory had been pictured as in jeopardy. And 
the horrors of war had been described. The time had come to 
close the debate. The greatest orator in the country was their 
spokesman, and he had been held back for the last appeal. The 
time had come for Fisher Ames to make the closing plea. 


1 Morison, Otis, 1, 56-57. 2 April 21, 1796. 
8 Gibbs, 1, 327. 4 Tbid., 325-26. 
& Ibid. (Wolcott to his father), 1, 331. 


302 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Vil 


Fisher Ames was not only the premier orator of his party; he was 
one of its most brilliant and captivating personalities. He had a 
genius for friendship and was good company. Nature had blessed 
him with her richest intellectual gifts. His precocity equaled that 
of Hamilton or Gallatin — he was a prodigy. At six he was study- 
ing Latin, at twelve he had entered Harvard, and there he was 
conspicuous because of his scintillation. His powers of application 
were equal to his natural ability, but he found time for relaxation 
when his animation, wit, and charm, combined with modesty, 
endeared him to his fellows and won the affection of his instruc- 
tors. Even at Harvard he was ardently cultivating the art of ora- 
tory, and the style then formed, while strengthened by age and 
experience, never greatly changed. Cicero was his model through 
life. During his preparation for the Bar, his appetite for good 
literature was not neglected, and he delved deeply into ancient 
history and mythology, natural and civil history, and he pored 
over the novelists and lived with the poets —Shakespeare, Milton, © 
Virgil. These were fruitful years and the Federalists were to get 
the harvest. At the Bar he instantly took rank as a pleader, but 
he found time to write articles on the political affairs of the time. 
In the convention called to ratify the Constitution, he disclosed the 
political prepossessions that were to govern his career. While not 
hostile to a republican experiment, he was skeptical of republics, 
fearing the domination of popular factions. These factions he con- 
sidered the rabble. Democracy, he despised. He was an aristo- 
crat by instinct and this guided his political conduct. 

He would have distinguished himself in literature had he de- 
voted himself to it. He wrote, as he spoke, out of a full mind, and 
his first draft of an article required no polishing or revision. This 
made him an amazingly brilliant extemporaneous orator. Al- 
though the slow processes of logical argumentation were not be- 
yond him, he depended more on illustration. His mind fairly 
teemed with images. The poets had endowed him with their gift. 
There was something Shakespearean in the fertility of his fancy, 
and he delighted his hearers or readers with his rapidly changing 
pictures. These came spontaneously, and, leaving an indelible im- 


THE DRAMA OF ’96 803 


pression on his audience, they were lost to him with their utterance. 
He scattered gems as though they were grains of the sea, and he 
the owner of the sands of the shore. Remarkably enough, this did 
not lead him to rhetorical flamboyance or over-elaboration. He 
was a master of the short sentence, and he possessed rare powers 
of condensation. 

In social relations he was lovable, but he carefully selected his 
intimates, having no stomach for the commonplace person. His 
companions were of the élite. Among them he was simplicity it- 
self, and generosity and kindness, but no man had a more brutal 
wit or sarcasm for a foe. Above middle height and well propor- 
tioned, he held himself erect. There was little in his features to 
distinguish him, for they were not strongly marked. His forehead 
was neither noticeably high nor broad; his blue eyes were mild and 
without a suggestion of the fire of domination; his mouth was well 
formed, but not strong; but his voice was melody itself. One who 
often heard him found that ‘the silvery tones of his voice fell upon 
the ear like strains of sweetest music’ and that ‘you could not 
choose but hear.’ ! There was more than a touch of aristocratic 
cynicism in his nature, and his favorite weapon in attack was 
sarcasm, but he was ordinarily considerate of the feelings of a foe 
in combat. No other member of the House could approach him in 
the eloquence of persuasion.? 


VIiiIlI 


Happily married to a beautiful woman, Ames had built himself 
an elegant home at Dedham where he lived and was to die, but in 
the fall of 1796 he had little expectation of lingering long to enjoy 
it. Nothing had enraged him more than the popular agitation 
against the Jay Treaty, and in the midst of the fight he suffered a 
physical collapse. In September, he was unable to ride thirty 
miles without resting for a day.? He had consulted various 
‘oracles’ and found that he was bilious, nervous, cursed with a 
disease of the liver, and he had been ‘forbidden and enjoined to 
take almost everything’ — meat — cider — a trotting horse — 


1 Thomas, Reminiscences, 53. 
2 Kirkland, Life of Ames; Thomas, Reminiscences; Familiar Letters, 24-25. 
% Ames (to Dwight), 1, 173-75. 


304 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


and to refrain from excess of every kind.! In October, with the 
congressional battle approaching, he had a relapse — ‘extreme 
weakness, want of appetite, want of rest.’ Faint hope then of 
reaching Philadelphia at the first of the session, ‘if ever.’ Still, the 
cool weather might restore him. Philadelphia, perhaps, by De- 
cember.? But December found him at Dedham, with King writ- 
ing him of the desperate prospects in the House and urging his 
presence,’ and in January Ames was writing Jeremiah Smith of his 
resolve to go on to Philadelphia. ‘Should this snow last, I am half 
resolved to jingle my bells as far as Springfield.’ At any rate, on 
the morrow he would go to ‘my loyal town of Boston in my covered 
sleigh by way of experimenting of my strength.’ 4 

‘February found him on the way. At New Haven where he 
lodged, the snow grew thin, and ‘there was great wear and tear of 
horse flesh.” At Stamford it was gone and he took a coachee. At 
Mamaroneck, twenty-five miles from New York, he slept, and 
awoke to find the snow ‘pelting the windows.’ Back with the 
coach, and a wait for the sleigh. Even so, he wrote, ‘to-morrow I 
expect to hear the bells ring and the light horse blow their trump- 
ets’ on reaching New York. ‘If Governor Jay won’t do that for 
me, let him get his treaty defended by Calumus, and such under- 
strappers.’ Two days in New York — three more — and Phila- 
delphia. ‘Do not let me go down to the pit of the Indian Queen,’ 
he had written a colleague. ‘It is Hades and Tartarus, and Peri- 
phlegethon, Cocytus, and Styx where it would be a pity to bring 
all the piety and learning that he must have who knows the afore- 
said infernal names. Please leave word at the said Queen, or if 
need be at any other Queens where I may unpack my weary 
household gods.’ > The day before this letter was written, Bache’s 
paper said that the ‘ratification is not to arrive until Mr. Ames 
has recovered,’ because ‘the subaltern officers of the corps not 
being supposed sufficiently skilled in tactics to be entrusted with 
the principal command.’ ® Six days later, he announced Ames’s 
arrival in New York.’ Thus, like a warrior borne to battle on a 
stretcher, Ames entered the capital. 


1 Ames (to Dwight), 1, 175-76, 8 Ibid., 177. ® Tbid., 180-81. 
4 Ibid., 183-84. § Ibid. (to Jeremiah Smith), 184-85,. 
® Aurora, February 2, 1796. ¥ Tbid., February 8, 1796, 


THE DRAMA OF ’96 305 


All through March he sat in silence listening to the debate on 
Livingston’s Resolutions, groaning under his physical disability. 
‘I am not a sentry, not in the ranks, not on the staff,’ he wrote in 
disgust. ‘I am thrown into the wagon as part of the baggage.’ } 
With the debate on the treaty itself about to begin, he wrote that 
he was ‘not fit for debate on the treaty and not able to attend 
through a whole sitting.’?. Thus he watched the swaying fortunes 
of the fight, sick and feeble, but expected to save the day in a 
pinch. When he rose that April day to make the final effort for his 
party, there was drama in the general appreciation of his condition. 
That Ames enjoyed it, we have no doubt. It was so much like 
Chatham carried into the House of Peers wrapped in his flannels. 


Ix 


Ames was a consummate actor that spring day. Not without 
art did he begin with a reference to his frailty. Here was a man 
ready to die for acause. Impassionedly he pleaded against passion. 
The treaty, he said, had ‘raised our character as a nation.’ Its re- 
jection would be a ‘violation of public faith.’ It had “more critics 
than readers,’ and ‘the movements of passion are quicker than 
those of understanding.’ Lightly he touched upon the constitu- 
tional question, and then hastened to his purpose — to discuss 
the consequences of rejection, to play on fear. With this he ex- 
pected to win his fight — with this he won. Reject the treaty and 
leave the posts in the hands of the British and invite war? 

‘On this theme,’ he said in his most thrilling tones, ‘my emotions 
are unutterable. If I could find words for them... I would swell 
my voice to such a note of remonstrance, it would reach every log 
house beyond the mountains. I would say to the inhabitants, 
wake from your false security, your cruel dangers, your more cruel 
apprehensions are soon to be renewed; the wounds yet unhealed, 
are to be torn open again; in the day time your path through the 
woods will be ambushed, the darkness of midnight will glitter with 
the blaze of your dwellings. You are a father — the blood of your 
son shall fatten your corn field. You are a mother — the war 
whoop shall waken the sleep of the cradle... By rejecting the 
posts we light the savage fires, we bind the victims. This day we 

1 Ames (to Dwight). 3 Ibid. (to Minor), 1, 190-91. 


306 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


undertake to render account to the widows and orphans whom our 
decision will make; to the wretches who will be roasted at the 
stake; to our country; and I do not deem it too serious to say, to 
our conscience and God. The voice of humanity issues from the 
shade of the wilderness; it exclaims that while one hand is held up 
to reject this treaty, the other grasps a tomahawk. It summons 
our imagination to the scenes that will open... I can fancy that I 
listen to the yells of savage vengeance and the shrieks of torture; 
already they seem to sigh on the western wind; already they 
mingle with every echo from the mountains.’ 

How the frontiersmen in the gallery must have stared at this 
solicitude for them from a Federalist of New England! 

Then, in closing, a perfect piece of art. ‘I have perhaps as little 
personal interest in the event as any one here. There is, I believe, 
no member who will not believe his chance to be a witness to the 
consequences greater than mine. If, however, the vote should pass 
to reject, and a spirit should rise as it will, with the public disorder 
to make confusion worse confounded, even I, slender and almost 
broken as my hold upon life is, may outlive the governments and 
Constitution of my country.’ He sank into his seat. ‘My God,’ 
exclaimed a Federal Judge, ‘did you ever hear anything like it?’ 
Crusty old John Adams wiped his eyes. Accept, said Ames, or 
England will turn the savages upon you; accept, or your Constitu- 
tion will be overthrown; accept, or the Republic will be destroyed. 

The Federalists were jubilant — as was Ames, none the worse 
for the speech. Soon Christopher Gore was writing him from 
London that he knew his speech was ‘in the hands of Mr. Pitt, 
Mr. Dundas and Lord Grenville.’ ! The Jeffersonians were alarmed. 
Madison was bitter because of the summons to ‘follow Washington 
wherever he leads.’ ? Soon he was to find that ‘the name of the 
President and the alarm of war’ had done mischief.? When the 
roll was called, several enemies of the treaty had been frightened 
from the firing line. Patton of New Jersey had a convenient ill- 
ness. Varnum was unavoidably absent. Freeman of New Hamp- 
shire had obtained leave of absence, and a newly elected Democrat 
from Maryland discreetly withheld his credentials until after the 


1 Ames, 1, 199-200, note. 
2 Madison’s Writings (to Jefferson), 1, 100-01. 8 Iiid., 103-05. 


THE DRAMA OF ’96— 807 


fight was over. By a majority of three the House decided to ap- 
propriate. Even so, it was the most expensive victory the Federal- 
ists had won, for the majority in the country was on the other side. 
Out of the struggle had emerged a new great leader to serve the 
Jeffersonians, Albert Gallatin. Jefferson had been so delighted 
with his speech that he wrote Madison that it deserved a place in 
‘The Federalist.’ ! During the remainder of the session, he was to 
cause much mental distress with his fiscal reform plans and his at- 
tacks on the Treasury. 


x 


Jefferson had followed the fight on the treaty from his moun- 
tain, making no personal effort to influence the result. It had not 
been so easy as he had hoped to forget politics in the cultivation of 
his peas, and when Congress met he had subscribed for Bache’s 
paper.? He divided the friends of the treaty into two classes; the 
honest who were afraid of England, and the dishonest who had 
pecuniary motives. At no time did he question the honesty of 
Washington. In his letters to Madison he poured forth his inner- 
most thoughts, but beyond this his correspondence had not been 
extensive. 

It is the fashion to set down as a pose his pretended indifference 
to the Presidency in 1796, but there is evidence enough that he 
was deeply concerned over his health. He had begun, as he 
thought, ‘to feel the effects of age,’ and was convinced that his 
health had ‘suddenly broken down.’? In a letter to Washington 
touching on political topics, he wrote that he would ‘put aside this 
disgusting dish of old fragments and talk . . . of peas and clover.’ 4 
In July, with the Federalist press, in expectation of his candidacy, 
intemperately denouncing his letter to Mazzei, he was writing a 
friend his estimate of the height of the Blue Ridge Mountains, 
explaining his plan for a moulding-board, and expressing his in- 
dignation because of the silly attacks on the memory of Frank- 
lin.® 

Fenno and Webster were working themselves into a frenzy over 

1 Jefferson’s Works, rx, 330-31. 2 Randall, 1, 273. 


8 Jefferson’s Works, 1x, 335-37. # Jbid., 339-43, 
5 Ibid. (letter to Williams), 346-48. 


308 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


the letter to Philip Mazzei, the Italian, in which Jefferson had 
frankly discussed American politics. It contained nothing that 
Jefferson had not repeatedly said to Washington’s face. ‘An 
Anglican aristocratical-monarchical party’ — this the theme. 
But he had hinted that Washington had been captured by the 
aristocrats and monarchists — and here was treason. Webster 
said so with all his vocabulary, and there was some ridiculous talk 
of impeaching the author of the letter after his election to the 
Vice-Presidency, but throughout it all Jefferson made no public 
comment, no denial, no explanation. He was ever the consum- 
mate politician.! The announced decision of Washington to retire 
made Jefferson’s candidacy a certainty, whether he willed it or 
not. Three years before, the Democrats had decided. All through 
the summer and autumn that was the understanding. 

To the Hamiltonians the retirement of Washington was pe- 
culiarly distressing. On most controversial subjects he had ulti- | 
mately adopted their view. More than one of their unpopular 
measures had been saved with their war-cry, ‘Stand with Wash- 
ington.’ With Washington eliminated, it was vitally important to 
Hamilton and his leaders to find a successor who would be more or 
less subservient. Hamilton himself was out of the question for the 
reason that Hamilton had given — he did not have the confidence 
of the people. Jay, who would have been the second choice, would 
have been a red rag to the ‘rabble’ in 1796. Few of the other 
leaders, with all their brilliancy and personal charm, could have 
made a popular appeal; and Adams was thoroughly distrusted and 
disliked by the Hamiltonians because of his independence. 

Under these circumstances, Hamilton and King, consulting, 
conceived the idea of persuading Patrick Henry to be a candidate. 
Just what appealed to them has never been satisfactorily ex- 
plained, for Henry had been among the most bitter and brilliant 
enemies of the ratification of the Constitution. With the acquisi- 
tion of wealth, great changes had occurred in the old patriot’s 
manner of thinking, and he had come to lean strongly toward the 
Federalists.2 Fear of Jefferson and a desire to break the solidarity 
of Virginia’s vote may have been a determining motive. That an 
effort was being made to find a candidate who would appeal to the 

1 Jefferson’s Works (Mazzei letter), 1x, 335-87. 2 Beveridge, Marshall, u, 156. 


THE DRAMA OF ’96 309 


South and West appears in King’s letter to Hamilton.! Whatever 
the motive, the decision to offer Henry the support of the Hamil- 
tonians was reached, and John Marshall was asked to approach 
him. 

The old orator was living quietly and happily at ‘Red Hill,’ his 
home in the country, where he liked nothing better than to drag 
his chair out under the trees, tilt it against one of the trunks, and, 
with a can of cool spring water beside him, look out lazily across 
the green valley. There, with his family and friends about him, he 
asked nothing better than to be let alone.? Motives of discretion 
and the limitations of a letter dissuaded the chosen emissary from 
writing to ‘Red Hill,’ but Henry Lee, who knew Henry more 
intimately, was asked to write him an intimation of what was in 
the air. No answer was forthcoming. Very soon, however, the old 
patriot would be in Richmond and Marshall would then sound 
him, and, discovering an indisposition to embark on the enter- 
prise, would ‘stop where prudence may direct.’ * ‘Thus Henry was 
cautiously approached, without being given any intimation of the 
source of the suggestion, and was found ‘unwilling to embark in 
the business.’ 4 Thus ended the flirtation with Patrick Henry, with 
the friendly conspirators hidden behind the fan. 

Anticipating a declination, Hamilton and King had canvassed 
the availability of Thomas Pinckney, the American Minister in 
London. ‘It is an idea of which I am fond in various lights,’ wrote 
Hamilton to King. ‘I rather wish to be rid of Patrick Henry that 
we may be at full liberty to take up Pinckney.’ ° This was due to 
the feeling that ‘to his former stock of popularity he will now add 
the good will of those who have been peculiarly gratified with the 
Spanish treaty’ — which he had negotiated.° Thus the inner circle 
of the Hamiltonians settled the matter for themselves without 
reference to the rank and file of the party. 


xI 


Thomas Pinckney was one of the finest gentlemen of his time. 
Tall, slender, erect, with handsome features and a princely bear- 
1 King’s Works, u, 46. 2 Henry, Henry, u, 515, 3 Beveridge, m1, 157. 

4 King’s Works, u, 48; Beveridge, u, 158. 
5 Hamilton’s Works, x, 163; King’s Works, u, 47. 
$ King’s Works (to Hamilton), u, 46. 


310 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


ing, he was a superb figure of a man. His manners were those of 
the natural aristocrat; he was courteous, dignified, and charming. 
A perfect self-control was reflected in the repose of his features and 
the tone of his voice. Though of ardent temper, he kept a tight 
rein upon it, and he became a master of persuasion and concilia- 
tion. A man of artistic temperament, with a touch of architectural 
genius, he planned his own houses, all imposing, and his town 
house in Charleston was the first to have self-supporting stairs 
four stories high. His library was one of the most extensive in the 
country. While lacking luster, there was a charm in his person- 
ality and a solidity in his character that appealed to men of con- 
servative disposition. Born of wealthy parents, he had been edu- 
cated in England, at Westminster, Oxford, and the Temple, and 
he had attended the fencing and riding school of Angelo in London. 
He had been trained as one destined to command. Through his 
English experiences he passed without yielding one jot of his ro- 
bust Americanism, and he fought in the Revolution and was once 
left wounded on the field of battle. 

As Governor of South Carolina, he had served with distinction; 
as Minister to England, he had stubbornly maintained positions 
that Jay was to yield; and as Minister to Spain he had electrified 
the country with a signal triumph. Matching wits with the 
celebrated Godoy, he had secured a treaty establishing our 
southern limits from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, making 
the river our western boundary, and throwing it open to our nav- 
igation with an outlet to the Gulf and the privileges of the port 
of New Orleans. It was this achievement, hailed with enthu- 
siasm in sections where the Federalists were weak, that led to 
his selection by Hamilton and King. 


XII 


The campaign of 1796 was one of scurrility, albeit both Jeffer- 
son and Adams, favored by the rank and file of the Federalist 
Party, comported themselves becomingly. The party press 
teemed with silly attacks and personalities. Adams was a mon- 
archist, an aristocrat, a panter after titles, an enemy of the 
masses, the defender of the red-coated assassins of the Boston 
massacre; and Jefferson was a French tool, a friend of anarchy, the 


THE DRAMA OF ’96 311 


inciter of the Whiskey Insurrection, a foe to public credit, an 
atheist, an enemy of the Constitution,! an incompetent in office, 
and a plagiarist who had stolen his essay on weights and measures 
from a pamphlet with which Noah Webster was familiar.2 Worse 
still: Adet, the French Minister, ‘better supplied with money than 
Faucet,’ was distributing it liberally in an effort to elect J efferson, 
and had sent agents into the western country in his behalf. Had 
not Gallatin been seen ‘in frequent conferences with Adet?’? A 
grave disappointment, this Adet who had such a ‘handsome wife’ 
and had seemed ‘mild tempered, well educated and no Jacobin.’ 4 
Then came Adet’s letter to Pickering reviewing the complaints 
of France against the American Government, and mentioning 
Jefferson pleasantly in connection with his official acts — and the 
Federalists had an issue. France was trying to dictate a President 
to America. Her Minister was electioneering. Fenno and Noah 
Webster were hysterical, Hamilton was pleased, Pickering, the 
new Secretary of State, was frothing so furiously as to disgust the 
Federalist leader in New York.® Madison was disgusted too,® and 
the notorious Judge Chase was demanding the jailing of editors 
who had dared publish the Adet letter which had been given to 
the press.’ What though Bache did point out that the letter was 
_ written on instructions from Paris given before the announcement 
of Washington’s retirement — it was a campaign screed! ® Soon 
it was the paramount issue, and the ‘Aurora,’ accepting it, was 
urging Fenno to spare some of his indignation for ‘the scourging 
of an American at a British gangway as Captain Jessup was 
scourged,’ and the shooting of a brother of a member of Congress 
trying to escape from a British press gang. Meanwhile, strange 
things were happening behind the screen in Federalist circles. 


XIII 


Hamilton was planning a repetition of the scheme he en- 
gineered in 1789, to bring Adams in second, with Pinckney first. 


1 Gazette of the United States, November 3, 1796. - 4 Aurora, September 1, 1796. 
8 Gibbs, 1, 332; (Wolcott to his father), 1, 350-52, 

* Ibid. (Wolcott to his wife), 1, 209. 

5 Hamilton’s Works (to Washington), x, 198-200; 200-01. 

6 Madison’s Writings (to Jefferson), 1, 103-05. 7 Steiner, MclZenry, 203. 

8 Aurora, November 24, 1796. 9 Ibid., December 27, 1796. 


312 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


He had never cared for the downright Puritan of Quincy, and the 


latter had never forgiven him the reduction of the Adams vote far 
below that of Washington in the first election. During the first 
Administration, Adams’s vote was indispensable to Hamilton’s 


policies on several occasions, and it had never failed. Thus there — 


was no opposition to his reélection. But the Presidency — that 
was different. It was evident that Adams was not a man to be led 
around by the nose by any man or clique, and Hamilton had never 
been a god of his idolatry. Thus, during the summer and autumn 
of °96, Hamilton was busy with a subterranean plan to substitute 
Pinckney for Adams in the Presidency by arranging for Federalist 
electors, scattered over the country, to vote to a man for Pinckney, 
while throwing a few Adams votes away on other men. As the 
high man was elected President and the second Vice-President, he 
expected to carry his point by management. 

It does not appear, however, that all his followers were in on 
the secret. His ever-faithful servitor, Oliver Wolcott’s father, 
either knew nothing of it or disapproved, for he feared that the 
juggling would result in the election of Jefferson, to the Vice- 
Presidency at least.! In the event of his election to the Presidency, 
Wolcott hoped ‘the northern States would separate from the 
southern.’2 As fate would have it, the suspicious Adams anti- 
cipated some such attempt to trick him, and his friends decided 
quietly to offset any possible Adams losses by dropping a few 
Pinckney votes to a third party. The result was a Jeffersonian 
sweep in the West and South, with the exception of Maryland, 
where Adams had a majority of three. Of the thirty-nine New 
England votes, Pinckney received but twenty-two, while all went 
to Adams. Such was the result of Hamilton’s strategy. Adams 
was elected with 71 votes, and Jefferson, with three votes less, had 
eight more than Pinckney. 

Thus the hated leader of the Democrats became Vice-President. 

Then, too late, the Hamiltonians realized their mistake. Wol- 
cott groaned that Jefferson in the Vice-Presidency ‘would be more 
dangerous than as President.’ * His very willingness to accept the 
position was ‘sufficient proof of some defect of character.’ Chaun- 
cey Goodrich was in accord. ‘We must expect him to be the nu- 

1 Gibbs, 11, 386-88. 3 Ibid., 1, 408-09. 3 Ibid., 1, 400-03. 


THE DRAMA OF ’96 313 


cleus of a faction,’ he wrote, ‘and if it will give him some greater 
advantage for mischief, it draws him from his covert.’ ! Ames 
dreaded his election as ‘a formidable evil.’ Hamilton buried his 
chagrin in a cynicism. ‘Our Jacobins say they are pleased that 
the Lion and Lamb are to lie down together,’ he wrote King. ‘Mr. 
Adams’s personal friends talk a little the same way. ... Skeptics 
like me quietly look forward to the event, willing to hope but not 
prepared to believe. If Mr. Adams has vanity “tis plain a plot has 
been laid to take hold of it.’ ? These hints at the possible seduction 
of Adams were not without some justification. 

Madison had urged Jefferson to accept the Vice-Presidency on 
the ground that ‘your neighborhood to Adams may have a valua- 
ble effect on his counsels. . . . It is certain that his censures of our 
paper system, and the intrigues at New York for setting Pinckney 
above him have fixed an enmity with the British faction.’ * Before 
receiving this letter, the incomparable strategist at Monticello had 
written Madison that in the event of a tie he should “solicit on my 
behalf that Mr. Adams may be preferred.’> Could he, by any 
chance, have expected this admonition to reach Adams in any 
way? A few days later, we find him writing directly to Adams ex- 
pressing regret that they had been put in opposition to one an- 
other. It seemed, he said, that Adams had been chosen. Of course 
he might be ‘cheated’ by ‘a trick worthy of the subtilty of your 
arch-friend of New York who has been able to make of your real 
friends tools to defeat their and your best wishes.’ Personally, 
he asked no happier lot than to be left ‘with the society of neigh- 
bors, friends, and fellow-laborers of the earth’ rather than with 
‘spies and sycophants.’* Four days later, we find him writing 
Madison of his willingness to serve under Adams. ‘He 1s perhaps 
the only sure barrier against Hamilton’s getting in.’” Other letters 
probably phrased for Adams's eye went out from Monticello, re- 
ferring to their ‘ancient friendship.’ But he wanted no place in the 
counsels of the Administration — and that was significant enough.° 

Meanwhile, the Jefferson letter to Adams, sent to Madison to 
be delivered or withheld according to his judgment, was put aside. 


1 Gibbs, 1, 411-13. 2 Ames (to Dwight), 1, 208. 
3 King’s Works, 1, 148. 4 Madison’s Writings, u, 108. 
5 Jefferson’s Works, 1x, 352-55. 6 Thid., 355-57. 


T [bid., 355-57. 8 Ibid.. 367-69. 


314 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


There was a ‘general air’ in the letter indicative of the difficulty 
under which it was written. Adams might resent the reference to 
Hamilton. Again he might interpret Jefferson’s expressed prefer- 
ence for the simple life as a reflection on his own ambition. ‘You 
know the temper of Mr. Adams better than I do,’ wrote Madison, 
‘but I have always conceived it to be a very ticklish one.’ The 
Jeffersonian press had begun to speak in kindly tones of Adams 
to the disgust of the Federalists. 

Then, one bitter cold day, the family carriage appeared at the 
door of Monticello, and the master carefully supervised the pack- 
ing of the bones of a mastodon which he had recently acquired and 
wished to present to the Philadelphia Philosophical Society, of 
which he had been elected president. Thus he reached the capital 
on March 2d, to be received, against his expressed wishes, with 
gun-fire and a procession flying a flag inscribed: ‘Jefferson, Friend 
of the People.’ He went at once to Francis Tavern to pay his re- 
spects to Adams. 

Thus the new Administration began, Bache sending a brutal 
parting shot at the old — an insult to Washington.! But the star of 
Hamilton had not set, for Adams had foolishly retained the Wash- 
ington Cabinet, hand-picked by his ‘arch-friend of New York,’ 
and the congressional leaders were still under the magic spell of 
the old Federalist chief. That was the cloud on the horizon, small 
that day, but destined to grow bigger and blacker until the storm 
broke, leaving much wreckage behind. 

1 Aurora, March 6, 1797, 


CHAPTER XIV 
AN INCONGRUOUS PORTRAIT GALLERY 


I 


T is a pity that in the days of the Adams Administration it was 

not the fashion to paint group portraits of the President and his _ 
Cabinet. Had it been the custom, a purely commercial artist — 
might have left us a conventional picture of no special interest; 
but had the task fallen to a great artist of intuitive penetration, 
capable of seizing upon the salient characteristics and the soul of 
his subjects, the result would have been a fascinating study in in- 
congruities and clashing spirits. The suspicion on the round, smug 
face of Adams; the domineering arrogance on the cold Puritan 
countenance of Pickering; the suave and smiling treachery in the 
eyes of Wolcott; and the effeminate softness and weakness in the 
physiognomy of McHenry would have delighted a gallery through 
the generations. 

Ali Baba among his Forty Thieves is no more deserving of 
sympathy than John Adams shut up within the seclusion of his. 
Cabinet room with his official family of secret enemies. No other 
President has ever been so environed with a secret hostility; none 
other so shamelessly betrayed by treachery. The men on whose 
advice he was to rely were not even of his own choosing. He in- 
herited them — that was his misfortune; but he meekly accepted 
them — and that was his weakness. Where Washington had begun 
with at least two advisers of transcendent ability, he was to under- 
take his task with the assistance of an official family that exceeded 
mediocrity only in the field of treachery and mendacity. Not only 
were they to disregard his wishes — they were to conspire against 
him. Not only were they to ignore his leadership — they were to 
take orders from a private citizen who was his political rival and 
personal foe. Years later, the relative of one was solemnly to 
justify their disloyalty with the remarkable statement that, hav- 
ing been appointed by his predecessor, ‘they owed him nothing’; 
and to defend their retention of place despite their indisposition 


316 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


to serve him honestly with the astounding assertion that ‘the inter- 
est of their party and the wishes of their friends prevented them.’ ! 
We are interested in the personalities of these men primarily 


because it was not only not ‘in the interest of their party’ for them. 


to remain, but ultimately destructive. The taxes, the standing 
army, the Alien and Sedition Laws would have weakened, and 
might have destroyed, Federalism; the party treachery within 
the Cabinet would have wrought its ruin without them. 


II 


John Adams was a very great man and a pure patriot, with 
many fatal temperamental weaknesses. Like Dr. Samuel Johnson, 
whom he strongly suggests, he would have thrived in an atmo- 
sphere of admiration. Had he been surrounded by incense- 
throwers and idolatrous disciples applauding his every utterance, 


forgiving his bursts of temper and smiling at the pinching of their. 


ears and the kicking of their shins, with a worshiping Boswell 
jotting down his conversations, he would have been supremely 
happy and probably at his best. Like the genius who spread his 
tail feathers so proudly at Streatham, he was vain, domineering, 
ponderous, at times tempestuous in his bursts of passion, disdain- 
ful of finesse, given to intemperate expressions, learned, prejudiced, 
often selfish — and a little fat. But he had played a noble part m 
the Revolutionary struggle, a dignified réle in the diplomacy of the 


Old World, and he was entitled to something better than he re-. 


celved. 

There was nothing thrilling in the appearance of Adams to 
captivate the crowd. Below the medium height and rather full, 
he looked the stolidity of the English country gentleman ? and in- 
vited the sobriquet of the sharp-tongued Izard of ‘His Rotundity.’ # 
His fat round face would have been less offensively smug had it 
not been so cold,‘ and his dignity more impressive had it been less 
aggressive. The top of his head was bald as a billiard ball, and, 
while he carefully powdered the remnant of his hair, nothing could 


have made this solid gentleman of the Quincy farm the glass of 


fashion. Unlike many of the public figures of the time, he affected 
no foppery, and, while he dressed with conventional propriety, his 
1 Gibbs, m1, 213. 8 Twining, 38. 3 Maclay, 30. 4 Twining, 37. 


—— 


AN INCONGRUOUS PORTRAIT GALLERY 317 


garb was so little a part of himself that most of the chroniclers of 
his time ignore it. We know that he appeared one day for dinner 
at Mrs. Francis’s boarding-house in a drab-colored coat ! and at 
his inauguration in ‘a full suit of pearl-colored broadcloth.’ 2 Even 
the saturnine Maclay, who poked fun at all his peculiarities of 
appearance, could find nothing objectionable but the sword he 
affected when he first presided over the Senate.’ 

Of his manner in company we must reach a conclusion from a 
composite of contradictions. Thanks to the Adams spirit of self- 
criticism, we have a confession of the manners of his youth when he 
was prone to make a display of his intellectual wares, and to prove 
his parts with sneering sarcasms about his elders.* Years later, 
an English tourist was impressed with his ‘somewhat cold and 
reserved manner’ and with ‘the modesty of his demeanor.’*® In 
neither picture do we have an attractive personality, and are safe 
In assuming that it was not pleasing, without drawing on the 
honest prejudices of Maclay. On the first attempt of the latter to 
establish social relations, he found Adams ‘not well furnished with 
small talk,’ and he was particularly struck with his ‘very silly kind 
of laugh.’ ® This interested the sour democrat from the Pennsyl- 
vania frontier, and, critically observing his manner of presiding 
over the Senate, he complained that ‘instead of that sedate easy 
air I would have him possess, he will look on one side, then on the 
other, then down on the knees of his breeches, then dimple his 
visage with the most silly kind of half smile.’7 This smile was 
evidently aggravating to the Senator’s gout, for we hear of it 
again at a dinner at Washington’s where he was clearly angered 
when he caught the great man ‘ever and anon mantling his visage 
with the most unmeaning simper that ever mantled the face of 
folly.’® ‘Bonny Johnny Adams,’ snorts the Senator, more than 
once.® Thus, painfully self-conscious, and without capacity for the 
appealing levity of banter, he was temperamentally incapable of 
that personal approach that makes for the intimacy of friendship. 
In the parlance of the day, he was a ‘poor mixer,’ and this had the 
same effect on political fortunes then as now. 

This alone would have made men indifferent, but he had a 


1 Twining, 37. 2 Familiar Letters, 116. 8 Maclay, 44. 4 Diary, u, 25, 
5 Twining, 37, ® Maclay, 14. 7 Ibid., 30. 8 Thid., 206. ® Jbid., 145, 206. 


318 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON | 


vanity that drove them away. If we are to believe the common 
comment of friend and foe, he was inordinately vain. With that 
strange, penetrating insight into his own character, he appreciated 
this weakness in his youth, and no doubt sought to uproot a vice 
that was in the very fiber of his being. In the musings of his diary 
we have the frank admission: ‘Good treatment makes me think I 
am admired, beloved, and my own vanity will be indulged in me; 
so I dismiss my guard and grow weak, silly, vain, conceited, osten- 
tatious.”! On another page he promises himself ‘never to show 
my own importance or superiority.’ 2 But the weakness increased 
with age. ‘I always considered Mr. Adams a man of great vanity,’ 
wrote the father of one of his Cabinet to his son two weeks after 
the inauguration.? This quality was so predominant that both 
friend and foe sought to turn it to advantage. Hamilton, in his 
ill-advised attack, was able to refer to ‘the unfortunate foibles of 
vanity without bounds,’ without fear of contradiction.‘ After his 
election to the Vice-Presidency, this vanity became ‘ridiculous.’ ® 
Strangely enough, there is some evidence that this very weakness 
was responsible in part for his election to that post. Referring to 
the part played in the event by Dr. Rush and himself, Maclay 
wrote that ‘we knew his vanity and hoped by laying hold of it to 
render him useful among the New England members in our 
schemes of bringing Congress to Pennsylvania.’ § But stranger still 
—and this is something to be kept in mind throughout — it was 
reserved for his greatest political opponent to predict to one of his 
lieutenants that, while Adams was ‘vain’ and ‘irritable,’ ‘he is so 
amiable that I pronounce you will love him.’? The general effect, 
however, was far different from love. It unquestionably played 
into the hands of his enemies and neutralized the effect of both his 
ability and militant patriotism. 


III 


Because of his inordinate vanity, he was susceptible to flattery, 
and they who knew him best approached him accordingly. We 
have an illustration of it at the time of the decision to dismiss 


1 Diary, u, 57. 2 Ibid., 25. 3 Gibbs, 1, 455-57; Wolcott, Sr 
‘ Hamilton’s Works, vit, 734. 5 Morse, 242, _ § Maclay, 86, » 
_' Jefferson’s Works (to Madison), v1, 63-67. ii 


AN INCONGRUOUS PORTRAIT GALLERY _ 319 


Genét. There was some question as to the attitude of Adams, and, 
knowing of his secret jealousy of Washington, George Cabot, to 
whom was assigned the task of guiding him favorably, called upon 
him one morning at an early hour. 

“Mr. Adams, this French Minister’s conduct seems to me to be 
the most objectionable,’ ventured Cabot casually. 

‘Objectionable? It is audacious, sir,’ stormed Adams. 

‘I think if you were President you would not permit him to per- 
form his office very long,’ said the cunning Cabot. 

‘Not an hour, sir. I would dismiss him immediately.’ 

‘I wish you would allow me to say to the President that such 
are your views,’ said Cabot. 

‘Certainly, sir; I will say so to the President myself when I see 
him.’ } 

Thus the danger of Adams’s opposition was cleverly removed 
by conveying the impression that the suggestion of a dismissal 
had come from him. So thoroughly were his enemies imbued with 
the idea that he could be led by subtle flattery that the apologists 
for the traitors in his Cabinet, taking note of his later harmonious 
relations with Marshall, explained that these were due to the 
genius of the latter in insinuating his own ideas into Adams’s head. 
However that may be, there was one thing that flattery could not 
do — it could not coax him from a principle or from the per- 
formance of a patriotic duty. When the royal Attorney-General 
of Massachusetts undertook to flatter him into the service of the 
King in the fight against the people eight years before the Decla- 
ration of Independence, he failed utterly. 

The violence of his temper made him difficult even to his 
friends, and he had but few. He had a genius for embroilment, and 
dwelt perpetually on a battle-field, sometimes real, often im- 
aginary, but always genuine to him. Liancourt, calling upon him 
at Quincy and finding his conversation ‘extremely agreeable,’ 
noted, however, that it was ‘tinged with a sort of sarcasm.’ 2 
Madison, we have seen, referred to his ‘ticklish’ temper.’ If a 
political opponent could give a moderate description of his weak- 
ness, and a Frenchman one so mild, the members of his Cabinet 
felt no compulsion for restraint. Franklin had done him a grave 

_} Lodge, Cabot, 65. 2 Liancourt, m, 124. 3 Madison’s Writings (to Jefferson), u, 111. 


320 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


disservice in a brief but altogether friendly characterization carry- 
ing the suggestion that he sometimes appeared mad. This was a 
hint on which his enemies were to play as long as he lived. They 
took Franklin literally and called Adams ‘crazy.’ ‘What but in- 
sanity’ could have led him to this or that? asks the biographer of 
Wolcott. ‘No sane mind could have imagined such a thought,’ 
he says again.2 ‘A weak and intemperate mind,’ writes one of his 
Cabinet to another.? Even Jefferson, who was more considerate 
of him than others, thought his French war message ‘crazy.’ But 
it was reserved for McHenry to sum up his enemies’ case against 
him. ‘Whether he is spiteful, playful, witty, kind, cold, drunk, 
sober, angry, easy, stiff, jealous, cautious, confident, close, open, 
it is almost always in the wrong place or to the wrong person.’ 4 
All of which means that he was super-sensitive, irritable, the vic- 
tim of an ungovernable temper which drove him into spluttering 
rages on ridiculously slight provocations. Men shrank from con- 
ferences with him on subjects involving a difference of opimion. 
Then he could be as insulting as Dr. Johnson without the ad- 
vantage of having obsequious idolators on whom to vent his rage. 
What a joy it would have been to have pitted these two men against 
each other on the question of colonial rights! What a picture 
Boswell could have made of the encounter! 

Adams was difficult in conference, too, because of his suspicious 
disposition. He could never quite persuade himself of the sin- 
cerity of his conferee, and he carried a chip upon his shoulder. 
This suspicion of his fellows had been a curse of his youth; it 
followed him to the grave. He felt himself surrounded by envy, 
hatred, malice, and was inclined to suspect that a good-natured 
smile was in derision. In youth he fancied that his neighbors were 
anxious to retard his progress. He was miserable in London, 
where his reception, while cool, was not half so bad as he imagined. 
The British Minister in Paris could not disabuse him of the notion 
that in London he would be looked upon ‘with evil eyes.’ * His 
worst fears were realized in ‘the awkward timidity in general’ and 
the ‘conscious guilt’ and shame in the countenances of the people.® 
This feeling that he was in the midst of enemies made him more 


1 Gibbs, 1, 468. 2 Tbid., u, 215. 8 Ibid. (McHenry to Wolcott), 395. 
4 Steiner, 477. , 5 Diary, u1, 392. 6 Jiid., m1, 393. 


AN INCONGRUOUS PORTRAIT GALLERY 321 


than ever tenacious of his rights. He knew the privileges and 
civilities to which his position entitled him, and keenly felt his 
failure to receive them. It was something he was never to forgive. 
The begrudging or withholding of a right was always, to him, an 
affront instantly to be met with a stormy challenge. ‘I am not 
of Ceesar’s mind,’ he wrote, soon after becoming Vice-President. 
‘The second place in Rome is high enough for me, although I have 
a spirit. that will not give up its right or relinquish its place.’ ? 
This sense of his deserts, because of ability and services, goes far 
to explain his relations with Washington and Hamilton. 

The evidence is abundant that he resented the fame and popu- 
larity of Washington. Like Pickering, he did not share the en- 
thusiasm over the great man’s military genius. During the war 
he had sometimes found fault with his military tactics.” Later, 
when he became the second official of the Republic, he secretly 
resented the distance that separated him from the chief. He had 
played the patriot’s rdle long before Washington had shown a 
marked interest in the quarrel of the colonies; had been one of the 
makers of the Revolution; had served with distinction in diplo- 
macy; and, unlike Washington, had studied politics and statecraft 
all his life. Why should he, with such a record, be so completely 
overshadowed, and why relegated to the end that upstarts like 
Hamilton — ‘the bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar’ — might be 
pushed to the front? This, the reasoning of his jealousy which was 
to destroy his perspective and lead him into trouble. 


IV 


This was due in some measure to the distance between reality 
and the dream world in which he lived. As he grew older, he be- 
came more and more impressed with the pomp of power. The son 
of a Yankee shoemaker was covetous of the ribbons of distinction. 
The masses receded to a respectful distance. In the forefront 
were the gods, and he among them; and among these he claimed 
a right to the front rank. Ceremony became important. Titles 
were safeguards of organized society. An order of nobility sprang 
up in his imagination. ‘You and I,’ he wrote Sam Adams, ‘have 
seen four noble families rise up in Boston — the Crafts, Gores, 

1 Adams, Works (to James Lovell), vim, 493-94. 8 Autobiography, u, 438. 


322 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Dawes, and Austins. These are really a nobility in our town, as 
the Howards, Somersets, Berties in England.’ His feet lost con- 
tact with the earth — he soared. ‘Let us do justice to the people 
and to the nobles; for nobles there are, as I have proved, in Boston 
as well as in Madrid.’! Many things, he thought, can make 
for nobility — even matrimony. ‘Would Washington have been 
Commander of the Revolutionary army or President... if he 
had not married the rich widow of Mr. Custis? Would Jefferson 
have been President ...if he had not married the daughter of 
Mr. Wales?’ Thus he challenged John Taylor of Caroline.? 
Infatuated with such views, he was naturally in harmony with 
his party in its contempt for democracy.® ‘If our government does 
well I shall be more surprised than I ever was in my life,’ he said 
one day, standing by the stove in the Senate Chamber before the 
gavel had fallen. Carroll ventured the opinion that it was strong 
enough. ‘If it is, I know not whence it is to arise,’ Adams replied. 
‘It cannot have energy. It has neither rewards nor punishments.’ 4 
This distrust of democracy was ingrained. We find it outcropping 
in his early life, as toward the end. When he was summoned to go 
over the reply of the Massachusetts Legislature to the pretensions 
of Hutchinson, the royal Governor, in 1773, he found ‘the draught 
of a report > was full of very popular talk and of those democratical 
principles that have done so much mischief to this country.’ 
Even Paine’s ‘Common Sense,’ which was tonic to the Revolution, 
was spoiled for him because ‘his plan was so democratical.’ 7 
Haunting the bookstalls in London he thought ‘the newspapers, 
the magazines, the reviews, the daily pamphlets were all in the 
hands of hirelings,’ and was convinced that the men who ‘preached 
about... liberty, equality, fraternity, and the rights of man’ 
could be hired ‘for a guinea a day.’ ® It was after this that he wrote 
the ‘Discourses of Davilla’ — an onslaught on democracy. And 
fourteen years after his retirement he wrote from his library at 
Quincy to John Taylor: ‘Remember, democracy never lasts long. 
It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a 
democracy that did not commit suicide.’ ® This distrust and dis- 


1 Adams, Works, cv, 420. 2 Ibid., v1, 462. 3 Morse, 247. 
4 Maclay, May 28, 1789. > Written by Samuel Adams. 
§ Autobiography, u, 310. 7 [bid., 508, 8 Adams, Adams, 1, 404, 


® Adams, Works, v1, 484. 


AN INCONGRUOUS PORTRAIT GALLERY 323 


taste for the masses weakened him as much with the people as his 
temperamental defects with his party associates. I have dwelt 
on these weaknesses because they explain the tragedy of his fail- 
ure. There were other qualities that entitled him to a happier 
fate. 


Vv 


Chief among these were the fervor and the disinterestedness of 
his love of country. Had he died the day after the signing of the 
Declaration, he would have been assured a permanent place in 
history. No man played a more heroic part in the fight for inde- 
pendence. The struggling young lawyer who refused a position 
under the Crown that he might not be embarrassed in supporting 
his countrymen in their inevitable struggle; 1 who, awakened by 
the sinister drum-beats of the red coats every morning, ‘solemnly 
determined at all events to adhere to [his] principles in favor of 
[his] country’; ? who defended Hancock in the courts on the charge 
of smuggling with stubborn tenacity until the case ‘was suspended 
at last only by the battle of Lexington’; * who, when the crisis 
came, prepared to immolate himself and family upon the altar of 
liberty; ¢ and who had the audacity to base an argument against 
the Stamp Act on the principles of the Revolution itself, and, 
standing four square against more petitions to the King, won the 
lasting gratitude and admiration of Jefferson when, as ‘the Cclos- 
sus of the Debate,’ > he bore the brunt of the battle for the Decla- 
ration — that man could well hold his head high in the presence 
of Washington himself. ‘Politics,’ he wrote Warren, ‘are an ordeal 
path among red-hot plough shares. Who then would be a politi- 
cian for the pleasure of running about barefooted among them. 
Yet some one must.’ ® And again: ‘At such times as this there are 
many dangerous things to be done which nobody else will do, and 
therefore I cannot help attempting them.’ Nor was he blind to 
his fate in the event of the failure of his cause. ‘I go mourning in 
my heart all day long,’ he wrote his wife in dark days, ‘though I 
say nothing. I am melancholy for the public and anxious for my 
family. ... For God’s sake make your children hardy, active and 
industrious.’ ® This intense Americanism did not moderate with 


1 Autobiography, 1, 210, 2 Thid., 214. 8 Thid., 215. 4 Tiid., 232, 311. 
§ Jeiferson’s tribute. * Morse, 59. 7 Iind., 60. 8 Jbhid., 61. 


324 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


time. As a politician he was all too often open to censure; as a — 
patriot he was above reproach. Jefferson never doubted his ab- 
sorption in his country; and Hamilton, temperamentally unable 
to get along with him, wrote him down as ‘honest, firm, faithful, 
and independent — a sincere lover of his country.’ * Because he 
had more enemies than friends, and more detractors than ad- 
mirers, one might conclude from the opinions of his contempor- 
‘aries that he had but mediocre ability. There is no question as to 
the fallibility of his judgment where his prejudices were enlisted 
and the characters of men were involved. Again we find Jefferson 
more friendly than the Federalists. ‘A bad calculator of the force 
and probable effect of the motives which govern men,’ he wrote; 
and then added, ‘ This is all the ill that can possibly be said of him; 
he is profound in his views and accurate in his judgment except 
where knowledge of the world is necessary to form a judgment.’ ? 
Hamilton thought him ‘a man of an imagination sublimated and 
eccentric,’ and was not impressed with his intellectual endow- 
ments. The father of Wolcott thought him ‘of a very moderate 
share of prudence, and of far less real abilities than he believes 
he possesses.” And McHenry, having been expelled from the 
Cabinet for his disloyalty, declared ‘the mind of Mr. Adams like 
the last glimmerings of a lamp, feeble, wavering and unsteady, 
with occasionally a strong flash of light, his genius little, and that 
too insufficient to irradiate his judgment.’* The Adams who 
emerges from these opinions is a man of ability often reduced to 
impotency by the lack of judgment. This 1s, no doubt, the whole 
truth about his intellect. The sneers from men who could not 
forgive him for the wrong they had done him, and from others 
who could not control him, cannot stand in the light of what he 
did, and said, and wrote. 

As a writer, he suffers in comparison with Hamilton and Madi- — 
son, and his more ambitious productions, like the ‘Discourses of 
Davilla,’ while showing much erudition and some ingenuity, are 
heavy and pompous. But in the earlier days when he was writing 
shorter papers for the press, he did better. Whether he could 
write or not, he loved to do it. The author of the earlier period 


1 Hamilton’s Works (to John Steele), v, 25.  ? Jefferson’s Works (to Madison), v1, 63-71. 
3 Hamilton’s Works, vu, 314. 4 Gibbs, 1, 475-77. 6 Steiner, 569. 


AN INCONGRUOUS PORTRAIT GALLERY 325 


was more interesting and attractive than that of later times. 

However much the critics may quarrel over his capacity to 
write, the evidence is conclusive as to his ability to speak. As an 
orator he was the Patrick Henry of New England. His argument 


against the Writs of Assistance in 1761 fired the heart of Otis and 
swept him into the ranks of the active patriots. Jefferson bears 


testimony to the power of his eloquence in the fight for the 
Declaration. Given a cause that appealed to his heart and imagin- 
ation, he never failed to find himself by losing himself in the fervor 
of the fight. aa . 

Nor can there be any question of his courage. It required te- 
merity to step forth from the patriots’ ranks to face the repre- 
sentative of the Crown with the most audacious denials of his 
pretensions; courage, too, to lead the fight against further at- 
tempts at conciliation with the King. But the most courageous 
act of his career was his defense in court of Captain Preston, the 
British officer charged with murder in the Boston massacre. Not 
only physical courage was here demanded, for he invited personal 
attack, but moral courage at its highest. He was dependent for 
clientage on the Boston public and the victims of the massacre 


were Bostonians. He was an American, and he was standing be- . 


tween a hated redcoat and an American revenge. He gambled 
with his career, for he armed his enemies with ammunition, and he 
was charged with selling his country for an enormous fee. The 
fact that he received but eighteen guineas would have been the 
answer, but he maintained a dignified silence. There is nothing 
finer or more courageous in the records of a public man.) This 
courage was to stand him in good stead when he defied his party 
for his country in the French negotiations, and played for the 
verdict of history. : 
This courage could only have sprung from the consciousness of 
an honest intent — and his honesty, personal or political, has 
never been questioned. Sedgwick recommended him to Hamilton 


for the Vice-Presidency as ‘a man of unconquerable intrepidity | 


and of incorruptible integrity,’ and Hamilton was to find to his 

chagrin that the compliment was not given in a Pickwickian 

sense.? And yet he was not a Puritan of the intolerant sort. In 
1 Autobiography, u, 230-32, 8 Adams, Adams, 1, 446. 


326 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


early life he was given to the reading of sermons and at one time 
confessed to an inclination to the ministry — but it did not last 
long. In early manhood, we find him moralizing in his diary 
against card-playing, but not on moral grounds. ‘It gratifies none 
of the senses ...; it can entertain the mind only by hushing its 
clamors.’ 1 Even the scurrility of his times spared him the charge 
of immorality. ‘No virgin or matron ever had cause to blush at 
sight of me,’ he wrote in his ‘Autobiography.’ ? And while Frank- 
lin and Morris appear to have taken advantage of the moral laxity 
of Paris, we are quite sure that Adams, packed in tight among 
fashionable ladies watching the Queen eat soup, never gave a 
flirtatious glance, and are more than half persuaded that his de- 
clination to join Madame du Barry in her garden was due to her 
none too spotless reputation. But if he was not given to women or 
to song, 1t appears that he consumed his full share of wine. We have 
his own story of the fashionable dinners in the Philadelphia of the 
Continental Congress, when he would sit at the table from three 
until nine ‘drinking Madeira, claret and burgundy.’? We get a 
glimpse of him in a New York Club before the Revolution with 
‘punch, wine, pipes and tobacco.’ # And on another occasion he 
records with boastful pride that he ‘drank Madeira at a great rate 
and found no inconvenience in it.’ > Even so, we may be sure that 
he seldom drank to excess. 

Such the man who sat facing the Cabinet he did not choose — 
stubborn, suspicious, vain, jealous, courageous, honest, irascible, 
tempestuous, patriotic, and rising above its members in ability 
and public service as a mountain above the pebbles at its base. 


VI 


No student of physiognomy, familiar with the character of 
Adams, could have glanced at the stern, cold Puritan face of 
Timothy Pickering, his Secretary of State, without a premonition 
of certain estrangement. The long, thin, super-serious features 
were as uncongenial and unresponsive as though carved from 
granite. The thin, silvery locks and the spectacles combined to 
create an unpleasant impression of asceticism; and the cold eyes 
that peered through the glasses spoke of the narrow, uncompromis- 

1 Diary, i, 62. 2 Vol. u, 145. 3 Morse, 79. 4 Diary, 1, 179. ® roid., 381. 


AN INCONGRUOUS PORTRAIT GALLERY = 327 


ing mind of a follower of Cromwell. There, too, he could read the 
insatiable ambition, the audacious courage, the relentless will of 
the Roman conqueror. Seldom did that face soften with a smile; 
for he had no sense of humor. His portrait, by Stuart, as a frontis- 
piece to a volume of old New England blue laws would have 
symbolized the spirit of the book. No Indian stoic ever presented 
a countenance less revealing in repose, or more stone-like in com- 
posure. The resemblance to the Roundhead fanatic was ac- 
centuated in the extreme simplicity, the Quaker-like plainness of 
his garb. 

Here was clearly a man to whom joyous frivolity was indecent 
dissipation; with whom the scrutiny of suspicion was a duty; and 
to whom duties were the sum total of life. But beneath the repel- 
lently cold, metallic exterior there were volcanic fires of passion, 
and when he emerged from the deadly calm of composure it was 
to storm. It was not in his nature to confer, but to lay down the 
law. So lacking was he in a sense of humor that he honestly per- 
suaded himself that he always stood at Armageddon and battled 
for the Lord. Even when he was moved to treachery by an am- 
bition wholly incongruous to his capacity, he really felt that he 
was detached from all personal considerations and was fighting 
for the abstract principle of right.1. Never once in his long life, 
even when he was a cheap conspirator planning the destruction of 
the Union, did he think himself in the wrong. Never once in his 
voluminous correspondence does he hint at a possible mistake. 
He was, in his political views and his personal relations, impeccably 
pure — and he admitted it. Not only did he admit it — he im- 
passionedly proclaimed it, and this alone made him an impos- 
sible adviser for John Adams. He was the smug, self-righteous 
type that would remake the world in its own image. They who 
disagreed with him were hounds of the devil to be thrown without 
pity into the uttermost darkness. And he was sincere in it all. He 
was fond of hymns and psalms, in church devout, at prayer most 
fervent, and he read the Bible habitually without discovering the 
passage about the throwing of stones.? 

This temperament made him difficult in even ordinary conversa- 
tion. He had an excellent command of language, but he preferred 
the harsher words. There was no twilight zone for him. Things 

1 Lodge, Studies in History, 201. 2 Pickering, rv, 386, $91, 


328 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


were white or black. He was violent in his opinions and violent in 
the gesticulation with which he tried to force them on his hearers. 
So little could he see himself as others saw him that, when he once 
exclaimed, ‘I abhor gesticulation,’ with a powerful sweep of his 
muscular arms, he could not understand the smile of his auditor.* 
But for this intemperance, all too much like that of Adams to 
make harmony possible, he would have been a great conversa- 
tionalist. He used words with accuracy, was interesting in narra- 
tive, and had read widely and wisely; but too frequently to con- 
verse with Pickering was to quarrel. This unhappy quality, along 
with his poverty, explains why he did not figure in the social life 
of the Federalist capital. His tactlessness and bluntness, which he 
confused with honesty, were intolerable. In a letter to a friend who 
had given an acquaintance a note of introduction, he wrote that 
he should ‘not put myself to the expense nor my family to the 
trouble of a splendid exhibition at table.’ ? It must have caused 
some mirth in the home of the elegant Binghams to read his reply 
to an invitation to dinner: ‘Mrs. Pickering and I are constrained 
to forego many pleasures of society, because we cannot persuade 
ourselves to enter on a career of expenses, which, being far be- 
yond our income, would lead to ruin. For this reason, Mrs. 
Pickering chooses to dine abroad only at Mrs. Washington’s, as a 
consequence of my official station; and this as seldom as decency 
will permit. ... But Mrs. Pickering is aware that as a public man 
I cannot seclude myself .. . and therefore often urges, on my part 
singly, an intercourse which is useful as well as agreeable. I shall, 
then, with pleasure, dine with you occasionally, but without 
promising to reciprocate all your civilities.’ f 

Here we have one of several traits that make him stand out 
among the other Federalist leaders as an exotic. He was poor, 
but not so poor as the letter indicates; nor was he so completely 
shut off from society, despite his frugality. If he gave no fashion- 
able entertainments, his was a home of hospitality, and he who 
promised no reciprocation for the entertainments of the Bing- 
hams was able to entertain at his board a future King of France.‘ © 
But, unfashionable, and plain as a Yankee huckster, he found the 


1 Pickering, m, 156. 2 Jbid., 1, 170. 
3 Joid., mw, 171. 4 Louis Philippe; Pickering, m1, 284-88, 


AN INCONGRUOUS PORTRAIT GALLERY 329 


ways of fashion irksome and offensive. Writing his wife dis- 
gustedly of the enormous head-dresses of the Philadelphia ladies, 
he added: ‘But you know, my dear, I have old-fashioned notions. 
Neither powder nor pomatum have touched my head these twelve 
months, not even to cover my baldness.’ ! And the ‘extravagance 
of the prevailing fashions,’ suggested by the introduction of ‘the 
odious fashion of hoops’ convinced him that many families would 
be ruined.? Verily such a creature would have been grotesquely 
out of place among his fellow Federalists in the gay drawing- 
rooms of Mrs. Bingham. 

He differed from them, too, theoretically at least, on a more 
vital point. They were thorough aristocrats; he was instinctively 
a democrat — though he seemed to prefer it as an ideal rather 
than as a reality. Lodge recognizes this difference and explains 
that ‘he had all the pride of the Puritan who gloried in belonging 
to the chosen people of God.’ * We can well believe the assertion 
of his son and biographer that he liked the common people be- 
cause among them he belonged. Then, too, he inherited a respect 
for them from his father who ardently espoused the cause of equal 
rights for all men, and was prone to apologize for the weaknesses 
of the poor, and to criticize people of wealth and power.* With 
this inheritance he was to enter the field of controversy at twenty- 
five in a newspaper battle with the Tories of Salem with a letter 
which might have been written by Jefferson. ‘For whom was 
government instituted?’ he wrote. ‘Was it solely for the ag- 
grandizement of the few, who, by some fortunate accident, have 
been bred in a manner which the world calls genteel? or to protect 
the lives, liberty and property of the body of the people? Is 
government supported by the better sort? On the contrary, has 
not every attack on the laws and constitution proceeded from that 
class? The very phrase, “friends of government” is invidious and 
carries with it an impudent insinuation that the whole body of the 
people, the pretended friends of government excepted, are enemies 
to government; the suggestion of which is as ridiculous as it is 
false.’ 5 

The tall, gaunt figure in plain garb, seated in company with the 
fashionable Hamilton or Morris, was not more incongruous than 


1 Pickering, 1, 215. 2 Ibid., 351. 3 Studies in History, 219. 
4 Pickering, 1, 5. 5 [bid., 1, 23-30. 


330 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


the mind, capable even in youth of such heretical and ‘dema- 
gogic’ thoughts. Stranger still, this liking for the common herd 
never wholly left him. Thus his experiment in pioneering in the 
western wilderness — where democracy thrived best. A wholly 
admirable figure, this Pickering of the frontier, applying brain 
and brawn to the conquering of the woods, organizing civil gov- 
ernment, battling at the peril of his life for law and order, kid- 
naped and carted away. His own story of this adventure is as 
thrilling as a dime novel.! Even then his faith in the people was 
not destroyed. 

Thus Pickering finally entered public life —a ‘friend of the 
people,’ farmer, frontiersman, unsuccessful merchant. About him 
there was no glamour of success. He had been a failure. At Har- 
vard he had made a fair record, and his meager career as a lawyer 
was unsuccessful. He had failed as a farmer, failed as a ploneer, 
failed as a Philadelphia merchant because unfit for commercial life. 
He had played a spinet and a violin and given lessons in sacred 
music at Salem and Marblehead, but that could scarcely be deemed 
success; ” and in the army, where he was capable as a trainer of raw 
recruits, his courage, energy, and promptness might have taken 
him far but for the handicap of short-sightedness and glasses.3 
Thus, when he entered the public service at forty-six his career 
had been one of failure, and he was to get this new chance through 
importunate applications to a man he little respected — for he 
had a poor opinion of the ability of Washington. Here again he 
differed from other Federalists holding a similar opinion; he did 
not simulate admiration.‘ The naming of a child after Washing- 
ton called for his sarcasm.’ He was disgusted during the war 
when a rustic was heard to say, ‘I suppose he [Washington] is the 
greatest man in the world.’*® He criticized Washington as over- 
cautious ’ and refused to hail him as a hero because he thought 
him lacking in ‘eminent military talents.’ ® He thought the army 
suffered through his procrastinated decisions.9 Serving on the 
committee at the close of the struggle to formulate the answer of 
the officers to the ‘Farewell Orders to the Armies of the United 
States,’ he referred sarcastically to the word ‘Orders,’ and wrote 


1 Pickering, m, 381-90. 2 Ibid.,1,14. 3 Ibid., 11,66. 4 Lodge, Studies in History, 221. 
5 Pickering, m1, 71. 6 Thid., u, 74. 1 Tbid., 78. 8 Ihid., 805 ® Ibid., 81-85, 


AN INCONGRUOUS PORTRAIT GALLERY 331 


his wife: ‘Though it is rather modest, or in other words does not 
abound in panegyric, I think it (the reply) will be graciously re- 
ceived.’ ! To another he boasted that the reply was marked ‘as 
the Italians do some strains of music — moderato.’ ? 

But land poor, and a failure, he was quite willing to serve under 
the man he did not appreciate. From the organization of the gov- 
ernment, he was an office-seeker, looking, not for a career, but for 
a job. There was no demand for his services — he urged them. 
His brother-in-law, a member of Congress, became his broker. 
He applied to Hamilton for an assistant secretaryship of the 
Treasury, to find it promised. In August his broker wrote him of 
a prospective vacancy in the postmaster-generalship and sug- 
gested that he see Washington at once.* A month later, Pickering 
made application,’ but his interview with the President only re- 
sulted in a temporary position as a negotiator with the Indian 
tribes. In May, 1791, he asked Washington for the Comptroller- 
ship of the Treasury, to be refused,® and it was not until August, 
after more than a year of persistent wire-pulling, that he was re- 
cognized with the then comparatively unimportant post of Post- 
master-General, which was not at that time a Cabinet position. 

Thus he came into close contact with Hamilton, entered into 
his plans, made himself useful, and slowly ascended, finally reach- 
ing the State Department with some misgivings, and only after 
many others had declined the place. He owed everything to 
Hamilton, nothing to Adams, and, as he sat in sphinx-like silence 
at the Cabinet table, it was to Hamilton, not to Adams, that he 
looked as chief. 


VII 


_ The same was true of Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury, 
albeit these two men were, in most respects, the antitheses of each 
other. There was nothing of saturnity and brooding silence in 
Wolcott — he smiled. Both wore masks — one that of a stoic, 
the other that of a smiling epicurean. They resembled in a com- 
mon capacity for uncommon treachery. In this, they both ex- 
celled. Both were professional feeders at the public crib and 
passionate panters after office... 


1 Pickering, 1, 483-84. 2 Ibid., 487. 8 Ibid., 1, 442 and 445, 
« Ibid., 451. 6 Ibid., 452. § Ibid, 488. 


332 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


The handsome Wolcott had infinitely more finesse in the art of 
double-dealing. He had read his Machiavelli to better advantage. 
If he was to conspire with the enemies of the chief, he was to 
present an ever-smiling face to Adams in the conference room. He 
was too exquisite a conspirator to seem one. He had early learned 
the advantage of smiling through; and leaving Adams, with his 
face wreathed in friendly smiles, he could sit down to the writing 
of a letter to Hamilton with the same smile still on his face. Life 
was altogether lovely and interesting to this happy warrior who 
delivered his sword thrusts through curtains. 

The son of an idol of Connecticut Federalists who was repeat- 
edly elected to the governorship, Wolcott passed his boyhood in 
and near Litchfield, ministering to a frail constitution by tending 
cattle and working on the farm. He did not permit the war to 
interfere with his career at Yale, felt no sentimental call to Valley 
Forge, and found that the rattle of musketry need not interfere 
with his preparations for the Bar. Almost immediately on the con- 
clusion of these preparations, he found a job as a clerk in the office 
of the Committee of Pay Table, and such was his industry and 
methodical efficiency that he rose in that line of the civil service to 
be Comptroller of Public Accounts before the formation of the 
National Government. 

This opened a new and fairer vista for an efficient bureaucrat, 
and the moment the department of the Treasury was established 
he was ‘induced by his friends’ to offer himself for a position. 
Even then, professional office-seekers merely yielded to the impor- 
tunities of admirers. The congressional delegation for Connecticut 
pressed hard for an appointment, and he was offered the post of 
Auditor of the Treasury at fifteen hundred dollars a year. We can 
scarcely conceive that he hesitated, though it is of record that his 
sponsors urged him to accept, and that Hamilton expressed the 
hope that he would not refuse. He had hoped for the Comptrol- 
lership — but that might follow. The fact that Hamilton had 
favored him for the better place was promising.2, Meanwhile, on 
the salary, he could ‘live cheap and snug as you please.’ ? Thus he 
went upon the Federal payroll. Thus he came under the observa- 
tion and supervision of the genius at the head of the Treasury, 

1 Gibbs, 1, 18. 2 Ibid., 21. 3 Ibid., 20; Wadsworth to Wolcott. 


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AN INCONGRUOUS PORTRAIT GALLERY —= 333 


then the most powerful dispenser of patronage. Thus he was able 
to practice his ingratiating arts on one worth while. In little more 
than a year he was made Comptroller on the recommendation of 
Hamilton, and when that statesman retired to private life, it was 
he who lifted the faithful servitor into the Cabinet as Secretary of 
the Treasury. There Adams found him; there, unhappily for him, 
he let him remain. 

It would be unjust to leave the impression that Wolcott was 
without merit. He was not brilliant, but he possessed an infinite 
capacity for taking pains. Even in college, where he failed to 
sparkle, he was a hard student with ‘the strong reasoning faculties 
of the Wolcott family’ a little neutralized by ‘some eccentricities 
in reasoning.’1 In the Treasury, in subordinate positions, he had 
shown good judgment, much practical sense, a comprehensive ac- 
quaintance with business and business needs, exceptional power of 
sustained application, no imagination, and a dog-like devotion to 
Hamilton. The latter found this combination of virtues had not 
only made his conduct good, ‘but distinguished.’ More, he had 
‘all the requisites which can be desired,’ and these were ‘modera- 
tion with firmness; liberality with exactness, indefatigable indus- 
try with an accurate and sound discernment, a thorough know- 
ledge of business, and a remarkable spirit of order and arrange- 
ment.’ ? In brief, he was the perfect bureaucrat, the indispensable 
man Friday. If he brought no political strength to the Adminis- 
tration, he could, with dependability, do the drudgery and register 
the will of others who could. 

If he was not a friend of the people, nor the electorate of him, he 
was the courtier and friend of the powerful, and thus his was one 
of the first careers created by the social lobby. If he did not cul- 
tivate the voters, he selected his friends with fine discrimination 
with the view of his own advancement. At Yale he cultivated 
Noah Webster and Uriah Tracy, a potent writer and a powerful 
politician; he early profited by the popularity and prestige of his 
father, and through his father’s and his family’s influential friends; 
and socially, he made himself the ‘bonny boy’ of the Hamiltonian 
circle, and smiled and joked himself into the affections of the 


1 Noah Webster’s impression, Gibbs, u, 11. 
2 Gibbs, 1, 65. 


334 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Bingham set. A beautiful and brilliant sister brought him the 
championship of the clever Chauncey Goodrich and his associates. 
A charming wife threw wide all the doors of the capital. While he 
was earning the grateful appreciation of Hamilton and the Essex 
Junto, this attractive wife was winning and deserving the tender 
affection of Mrs. Washington, with whom she was on terms of 
intimacy, and she was corresponding regularly with Nellie Custis. 
When Washington left public life, his wife gave the wife of Wolcott 
a lock of the General’s hair and one of her own. The social lobby 
looked after its own — and Wolcott was its very own. 

For this cultivation of the social lobby, he was well adapted, for 
he had a genius for society, with his cheerful disposition, his play- 
ful manner, his conversation, which, while sometimes sober, was 
usually gay. The ‘small talk’ that Adams lacked, Wolcott had in 
full measure running over. A master of the art of banter, no one 
with entrée to Mrs. Bingham’s could tell a joke better or more 
noisily enjoy one. His laugh was hearty, frequent, and infectious. 
Living in a world of statistics, he at least affected a love of litera- 
ture, was fond of quoting poetry, and interested in the personali- 
ties of distinguished writers. His conversation after office hours 
could be light and graceful. Gracious, smiling, ingratiating, this 
bureaucrat — one of the first — created and sustained by the so- 
cial lobby as one of its first exhibits. He differed from Pickering 
as day from night, but like his sphinx-like colleague of Salem, he 
owed everything to Hamilton, nothing to Adams; and as he sat, 
suave and smiling, at the Cabinet table, it was to Hamilton, not 
to Adams, that he looked as chief. 


VIII 


If Pickering was a conspirator against Adams and did not care 
who knew it, and Wolcott a conspirator trying to conceal it, 
James McHenry, the Secretary of War, was a conspirator and 
scarcely knew it. The simplicity of this Irish immigrant is most 
disarming. Left alone, he would have been harmless. His was 
only another instance of loving, not wisely, and too well. Born 
in comfortable circumstances in Ireland, the impairment of his 
health through intensive application to his studies in an academy 

1 Gibbs 1, 449. 


AN INCONGRUOUS PORTRAIT GALLERY 335 


in Dublin brought him to America on a recuperative voyage. So 
favorably was he impressed that his family soon followed and his 
father opened a general store in Baltimore. A year later, we find 
him in an academy in Newark, Delaware, and then in Philadel- 
phia studying medicine under the celebrated Dr. Rush. But he 
took as little to his profession as to the prosaic duties of the count- 
ing-room, and, thanks to inherited property, lived through the 
greater portion of his life as a gentleman of leisure. In nothing that 
he ever undertook did he attain distinction. The practice of his 
profession was limited to a brief period as surgeon in the army; 
his career in commerce was almost as much curtailed; and he 
employed his leisure as a dilettante in politics and literature. 

Had McHenry remained in Ireland, it is easy to imagine him as 
a young blade about Dublin, affecting the fashions, a bit dandified 
in dress, over-fond of society, given to verse. A searcher of souls 
might have discovered in him an ambition — to write poetry. 
Kven in his academy days at Newark he was an inveterate verse- 
maker, and he thought enough of his effusions to send them to the 
papers. It was a weakness he never overcame, and at his death 
they found a great portfolio full of rhymes. It is possible — and it 
is this pathetic touch that makes one almost love him — that he 
hoped for a posthumous volume as a memorial and monument. 
Some of these lyrics are clever, light and graceful, reminders of the 
sort that even Curran liked to make for the amusement of his 
friends — thoroughly Irish. He could never have become a poet, 
but there is evidence in his letters that had he turned his attention 
to the humorous essay, he might have produced things worth 
while. These epistles are charming in their playfulness, sprightly, 
witty, glowing with humor. No one among the public men of 
the period could have made posterity so much their debtor with 
letters on men, women, and events — not even Morris, Ames, or 
Goodrich. He was really made for an observer, rather than partici- 
pant, in the harsh conflicts of life — more of a Horace than a Rob- 
ert Walpole, more of a Boswell than a Johnson. Dinners, dances, 
routs, these, and the writing of light verses, were enough to make 
him happy. 

And yet he was not effeminate. If he did not play his part in 


1 Steiner, 2. 


336 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


the affairs of men with brilliancy or even efficiency, he did with 
courage and to the best of his ability. We have few references to 
his services as surgeon in the army. It was when he became one of 
Washington’s secretaries that he fell completely under the fascina- 
tion of Hamilton. Even before his resignation from the army, he 
had entered politics as a member of the State Senate in Maryland, 
a rather important body consisting then of but fifteen members. 
Here he was the representative of the commercial class. In the 
Constitutional Convention he was obscure, and strangely enough 
his views were the very opposite of Hamilton’s. Speaking seldom, 
his voice was raised in warning against too much centralization.! 
He was even favorable to a mere amendment to the Articles of 
Confederation,’ and his chief interest was in the provisions for the 
regulation of commerce.? When the work was over, he signed 
with avowed reluctance, and solely on the ground — which was 
characteristic — that he distrusted his own judgment, that amend- 
ments might be made, and he was willing to take a chance.‘ In 
the bitter fight over ratification in the Maryland Convention, he 
took but little part. 

Even so, the confidence and friendship of Washington and 
Hamilton were not weakened. To him they looked from the be- 
ginning for advice on Maryland patronage, and Washington found 
it convenient to use him as an agent in matters of this sort. 
Hamilton thus employed him frequently. Taking seriously his 
role as the Federalist boss and distributer of the loaves and fishes, 
he resented the disregarding of one of his recommendations, and 
even the long explanatory letter of Hamilton failed to smooth his 
ruffled feathers.’ More than two years were to elapse before his 
woman-like affection for his idol gained the ascendancy over his 
resentment. ‘I have not ceased to love you nor for a moment felt 
an abatement of my friendship,’ he wrote impulsively after the 
long silence.® 

Like Pickering and Wolcott, McHenry was persistent in his 
hints for place. Six years before the Constitution went into effect, 
we find him soliciting the influence of Washington to get him a 
diplomatic post in Europe, and the great man tried and failed. 
Among the first letters Hamilton received on entering the Cabinet 


1 Steiner, 97. 2 Ibid., 100. 8 Ihid., 99. 4 Ibid., 107. 5 Tbid., 124. 
6 Jbid., 129, 132. 7 Ibid., 140-41. 8 Jiid., 156. °° Ibid., 51. 


AN INCONGRUOUS PORTRAIT GALLERY — 337 


was one from McHenry. ‘I am not wholly lost to ambition.’ he 
wrote, ‘and would have no objection to a situation where I might 
indulge and improve at the same time my literary propensities, 
with, perhaps, some advantage to the public. Would you, there- 
fore, be good enough to feel . . . whether the President has thought 
of me, or would, in such a case, nominate me. I wish you would do 
this for me as a thing springing entirely from yourself.’ 1 Nothing 
came of it, and the faithful party hack continued to run the er- 
rands of the Administration in Maryland. Three years later, he 
took his courage in both hands and wrote directly to Washington 
asking to be sent to Paris and Vienna to attempt to secure the re- 
lease of Lafayette. He wanted a change of air. It would be no 
use, the President replied.2? It was not until near the close of 
Washington’s eight years in office — and only then because many 
others had declined — that he was finally summoned to Phila- 
delphia to become Secretary of War. Would he have felt so 
much elated had he read Hamilton’s comment on his capacity? 
‘McHenry, you know,’ wrote the leader. ‘He would give no 
strength to the Administration but he would not disgrace the 
office. His views are good.’? But happily he did not know, and 
jubilantly he gave up all private enterprises as incompatible with 
public office— for in such matters he was meticulously proper — 
and, mounting his horse, he rode to Philadelphia. He carried the 
conviction with him that he owed his honor to the earnest persist- 
ency of his idol. To the extent indicated, this was true. The great 
genius of Federalism, now planning to continue his domination of 
the Government from his law office in New York, had reasons 
to believe that whoever might be President, McHenry would be 
his own faithful servitor. When Hamilton had married Betty 
Schuyler, his friend had journeyed to Albany with some verses for 
the event. Was it with an indulgent smile that the bridegroom 
acknowledged the poem? ‘You know I often told you you wrote 
prose well, but had no genius for poetry. I retract.’* Six years be- 
fore the first inauguration of Washington, this ardent friend had 
written Hamilton: ‘Were you ten years older and twenty thousand 
pounds richer, there is no doubt but that you might obtain the 


1 Steiner, 123. 2 Thid., 145. 8 Hamilton’s Works, x, 129-31. 
4 Steiner, 30. 


338 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


suffrages of Congress for the highest office in their gift.’ ! Verily it 
was not without an eye to the future that Hamilton found a place 
for such an idolater and political valet in the Cabinet. 

There is something a bit wistful and pathetic about McHenry 
that persuades forgiveness for even his treachery to Adams. His 
were the sins of a lover, and love covers a multitude of sins. 
Nature intended him for a snug harbor, and fate pushed him out 
upon tempestuous seas. His own best epitaph has been written by 
himself: ‘I have built houses. I have cultivated fields. I have 
planned gardens. I have planted trees. I have written little es- 
says. I have made poetry once a year to please my wife; at times 
got children, and at all times thought myself happy.’ ? Like Pick- 
ering and Wolcott, he owed everything to Hamilton — nothing to 
Adams; and as he faced Adams in the Cabinet room, it was to 
Hamilton — not to Adams — that he looked as chief. 

The other member of the Cabinet, the Attorney-General, was a 
political cipher. Knowing what we now know of the characters and 
factional affiliations of the President and his advisers, it will not be 
difficult to follow the serpentine trail of the next four years, nor to 
understand one of the forces that worked with Jefferson for the 
utter destruction of the Federalist Party. 


t Life of Hamilton, by his son, u, 241. 8 Steiner, 159; letter to Hamilton, 


CHAPTER XV 
COMEDY AND HEROICS 


I 


CARCELY had Adams entered upon his office when he found 
himself confronted with the possibility of a war with France. 
Some time before, Gouverneur Morris, the American Genét in 
Paris, had been recalled, none too soon, and James Monroe had 
been sent to smooth the ruffled feathers of the French. Because he 
had followed his instructions too enthusiastically and failed to 
understand that ‘a diplomat is a person sent abroad to lie for his 
country,’ he had been recalled in disgrace, as Jefferson had fore- 
seen, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a Charleston Federalist, 
had been sent as Minister. Not only had the French Government 
refused to receive him, but he had been ordered from the soil of 
France. All this seems wicked perversity on the part of France 
without a hasty glance at the antecedents of the story. 
Primarily nothing could have been more unfortunate than the 
appointment of Morris. No more charming or clever diplomat than 
this bosom friend of Hamilton has served America abroad. Born 
to the purple, he was an aristocrat by nature, with a blatantly 
cynical and contemptuous conception of the masses of mankind. 
His was the shimmer due to generations of polishing. As a young 
man in the society of New York and Philadelphia, he was enor- 
mously popular because he was handsome, dashing, witty, elo- 
quent, a bit risqué, and in consequence of his fashionable and 
gilded background. In the Constitutional Convention no one 
spoke with greater fluency or frequency — or with less effect. He 
sought the establishment of an aristocratic state, and made no 
secret of his hostility to democracy. To an even greater degree 
than Hamilton he foreshadowed the extreme policies of the Fed- 
eralist Party. He was, in truth, its personification, able, brilliant, 
rich; socially delightful, cynical, aristocratic, masterful, and dis- 
dainful of the frontier.1 Like Hamilton, he failed in the Conven- 
1 Roosevelt, Morris, 127. 


340 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


tion, but his was the hand that fashioned the phrasing of the 
fundamental law. 

There was more than a hint of the fashionable roué in this hand- 
some fellow when he went to Paris. Women and their pursuit was 
ever an engrossing game with him. Even his graduation essay 
was on ‘Wit and Beauty,’ and for his Master’s Degree he wrote 
on ‘Love.’ He was the sort of beau that Congreve would have cher- 
ished, elegant in dress and manner, given to levity and light banter, 
eagerly sought. The loss of a leg through an accident in 1780 did 
not sour him nor diminish his appeal to women. On ‘a rough oak 
stick with a knob at the end,’ ! he hobbled on to his triumphs. 

Such was the man sent to succeed Jefferson, the philosopher of 
democracy, at the moment the Revolution was breaking on the 
boulevards — a bitter, outspoken partisan of the old régime, a 
sarcastic enemy of the Revolution, a champion of privilege less 
compromising than the nobility itself. While Genét was intrigu- 
ing against the Government in America, Morris was intriguing 
against the Government in France. But his love flowers were still 
thrown over the garden wall of politics. Jefferson had been shocked 
at his reactionary opinions in Paris. Madame Lafayette had chided 
him on being an aristocrat.2 Quite early he began his affair with 
Madame de Flahaut, the novelist, a pretty, winsome woman who 
effectively used her marriage to an old man as a lure for lovers, 
and his diary teems with references to the frail beauty. There were 
evenings at her home, sneering at liberty and democracy; teas in 
her salon; drives and dinners, when he was entranced by the 
‘spirituel and delicate repartee’ of his friend. Then walks in the 
Gardens of the Tuileries and about the Champs Elysées, after- 
noons at Madame’s house reading ‘La Pucelle,’ while she rode 
about Paris in the well-known carriage of the American Minister,‘ 
and finally, when danger came, he took her into his house. The 
Minister aimed high, and even the Duchess of Orleans was not 
above his amorous expectations, thinking her beautiful enough 
‘to punish the duke for his irregularities,’ and we find him writing 
poems to her, and buying her a Newfoundland dog in London.’ 
No young blade ever found Paris more seductive. 


1 Morris, Diary, 3, 14. 2 Diary, 1, 35. 8 Ibid., 133. 4 Jhid., 181. 
& La Belle Pamela, 217, note. 


COMEDY AND HEROICS 341 


On swept the Revolution, on came the Terror, with Morris 
openly and defiantly sneering at the former and its principles. The 
coldness of the crowds in the streets when the Queen rode by en- 
raged him.! In the terrible August days of 1792 he drove the re- 
actionary Madame de Flahaut through the Bois de Boulogne,? and 
when the nation imprisoned the King he was soon neck-deep in 
intrigues to effect his rescue. Messages were exchanged with 
Louis, plans perfected, and only the King’s courage failed. Later 
Louis made him the custodian of 750,000 livres to be used in 
bribing those who stood in the way of his escape. America’s 
Minister was paymaster of the King seeking to join the allied 
monarchs in the crushing of the Revolution.4- Much of this was 
known in Paris, and much of it known and approved by Feder- 
alist leaders in America, Ames objecting to the publication of 
certain papers because they would disclose Morris’s intolerable 
activities.® 


II 


Monroe was the antithesis of Morris. Where Morris was bril- 
liant, Monroe was dull; where Morris was bubbling with a sense of 
humor, Monroe had none at all; where Morris was a lover of din- 
ners and dances, Monroe was indifferent; where Morris was a 
Cavalier, Monroe was a Puritan in his relations with women; 
where Morris was an aristocrat, Monroe was a democrat; Morris 
was a monarchist at heart, Monroe, a robust republican; Morris 
an enemy of the French Revolution, Monroe, a friend. But if 
Monroe was not scintillating, he was sincere, and if not brilliant, 
he was industrious. Soon he was as popular in Paris as Morris 
had been unpopular — so popular that Jay thought it not beneath 
his dignity as an American Minister to England to exchange be- 
littling letters with Grenville about him. He had ironed out old 
differences when the Jay Treaty compromised his position. 

No diplomat ever worked under more disheartening handicaps, 
for the Federalists in Philadelphia hated him, and months went 
by without a line of instructions or news from the State Depart- 


1 Diary, 1, 75. 2 Ibid., 572, 8 Ibid., 556. 
* Roosevelt, Morris, 221-23. 5 Ames (to Gore), 1, 134, 
6 Familiar Letters, 356-57. 


342 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


ment. Meanwhile, Washington was being poisoned against him 
by Federalist politicians who had his ear, and in the spring of 
1796 Madison wrote Monroe that his enemies had ‘been base 
enough to throw into circulation insinuations that you have 
launched into all the depths of speculation’ and ‘purchased the 
magnificent estate of the late Prince of Condé.’ ! Pickering and 
Wolcott were planning his recall that spring and writing Hamilton 
about it.2 The latter was easily persuaded.? Some one else should 
be sent — some one not so friendly to the French. That the 
leaders of the English party were not averse to giving offense to 
France is shown in the astounding suggestion that William Smith, 
spouter of pro-English speeches, written by Hamilton, that had 
been printed and circulated in England, should be sent.’ It re- 
quired no blundering by Monroe to pave the way for his recall — 
the politicians were sparing him that trouble. 

He had officially informed the Minister of Foreign Affairs that 
Jay was not to negotiate a commercial treaty, and would sign 
none that was in conflict with the Franco-American Treaty — 
because those were his instructions. When, with rumors to the 
contrary flying over Paris, on the completion of the treaty, he 
had, on the strength of a solemn and utterly false assurance from 
Jay, reiterated that there was no conflict. When the document 
reached Paris, the French were bitterly resentful and Monroe was 
discredited and crippled. Even so, he probably prevented a de- 
claration of war by representing that such a course would throw 
America into the arms of England — and this was charged against 
him by those Federalist leaders who sought war. Then he was 
recalled; and at the farewell audience an offensive speech by the 
French official, which Monroe unpardonably failed to resent, gave 
his enemies more ammunition. 


III 


With the refusal to receive Pinckney, the crisis came. To the 
war hawks it was a golden hour — war and no negotiations. Pick- 
ering and Wolcott fumed over the suggestion of an extraordinary 
mission. Hamilton, the sanest and most prescient of them all, 


1 Madison’s Writings, 11, 91-92. 
? Gibbs, 1, 359. Pind _ © Tbid., 366-68. 


COMEDY AND HEROICS B43 | 


realizing the importance of a united country in case of war, pro- 
posed sending an embassy of three, including one Jeffersonian of 
distinction. For almost five months a spirited debate of the 
leaders continued. In January, Hamilton had written Washington 
urging an extraordinary mission, including Madison, to conciliate 
the French, with Pinckney, who was not distasteful to them, and 
George Cabot, to moderate the Gallicism of the other two, to 
supply commercial information, and to represent the friends of the 
Administration. Two months later, in a similar reeommendation 
to McHenry, he proposed Jefferson instead of Madison, and Jay 
in the place of Cabot. Then he would have a day of fasting and 
prayer for the opening of Congress, an embargo, an increase in 
the revenue, the use of convoys, and qualified letters of marque 
for merchantmen to arm and defend themselves.2 The same day 
he wrote the same suggestion for Pickering.’ 

It was at this juncture that Hamilton began to run foul of the 
pro-English war craze of Pickering, who questioned the plan be- 
cause the Democrats favored it. All the more reason for it, replied 
Hamilton. Unhappily, there was a prevalent feeling that the 
Administration wanted war and this should be counteracted.4 To 
Wolcott, he wrote in the same strain the next day.® Even the 
usually pliant Wolcott was in rebellious mood and replied with an 
attack on Madison as a frequenter of M. Adet’s parties, whom 
that Minister wished sent, and who would wreck the negotiations, 
and ‘throw the disgrace of failure on the friends of the Govern- 
ment.’ ® Clearly it was time for Hamilton to assume his imperial 
manner, and he did, in a sharp rebuke to his protégé against 
‘passions that prevent the pliancy to circumstances which is 
sometimes indispensable.” Then ‘what risk can attend sending 
Madison, if combined, as I propose, with Pinckney and Cabot,’ 
he added.’ Realizing now the importance of bringing up his 
congressional reserves, he wrote to William Smith by the same 
mail.’ 

The insurgency against the plans of the Federalist chief was 
now in full blast. Tracy was writing Wolcott — ‘No man will be 


1 Hamilton’s Works, x, 234. 2 Tbhid., 241. 8 Tbid., 243-46. 
* Tiid., 246-47. 5 Gibbs, 1, 484-85. 8 [bid., 486-87. 
1 Tbid., 489-90; Hamilton’s Works, x, 251-52, 8 Hamilton’s Works, x, 253. 


344 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


sent on this business but a decided Federalist.’ 1 Jeremiah Smith 
having informed Cabot of the dispute, the latter wrote Wolcott 
that he could see no possibility of finding new messengers ‘with 
the expectation that they will not be kicked.’? The same day 
—less circumspect outside Administration circles —he wrote 
Jeremiah Smith that a new embassy ‘would be disgraceful.’ ? Ames 
had been won over by Hamilton, but the day after the extra ses- 
sion began, Cabot. wrote Wolcott that his mind was ‘still as un- 
satisfied as at first.’ 4 Four days before the session opened, Hamil- 
ton was bringing pressure to bear on Pickering, declaring the 
mission ‘indispensable to silence the Jacobin criticism and pro- 
mote union among ourselves.’ But by this time he had changed 
the personnel of his mission — Rufus King, rabidly pro-English, 
should be sent with Pinckney and Jefferson. Meanwhile, Mc- 
Henry was receiving letters from Maryland Federalists urging 
war,® but Hamilton’s masterful methods had won the Cabinet, 
and when Adams took the opinions of the Ministers he received 
replies that had been dictated, and, in the case of McHenry, 
written in large part, by the Federalist chief.’ 

All the while Adams had been receiving volunteered advice, 
though it does not appear that Hamilton thought it worth while to 
communicate with him direct. He had received a letter from Knox 
urging Jefferson because of the compliment that would be implied 
in his rank. This touched Adams where he was ticklish. ‘The 
circumstance of rank is too much,’ he replied. ‘What would have 
been thought in Europe if the King of France had sent Monsieur, 
_ his eldest brother, as an envoy? What of the King of England if 

he had sent the Prince of Wales? Mr. Jefferson is in a sense in the 
same situation. He is the first prince of the country, and the heir 
apparent to the sovereign authority.’® Ah, ‘Bonny Johnny,’ 
lucky that this letter did not fall into the hands of Bache with its 
references to the ‘prince’ and the ‘heir apparent’! 

However, in a discussion of the mission with Jefferson, the 
President had suggested Madison. The wary Democratic chief 
received the suggestion with caution, for the experience of Monroe 


1 Gibbs, 1, 537. * Lodge, Cabot, 129. . 
8 Tind., 130-31. 4 Tbid., 137. 5 Hamilton’s Works, x, 261-65. 
6 Steiner, 208-09. 1 Ibid., 213. 8 Adams, Works, vit, 532-34; 535-86, 


COMEDY AND HEROICS 345 


offered little inducement to a Democrat to subject his reputation 
to the mercies of the man-eating Pickering. Certainly the sug- 
gestion received no encouragement. The President and his most 
dangerous opponent had a friendly chat and parted friends — 
not soon to meet in conference again. The sage of Monticello had 
never been more courteous or courtly, the man from Braintree 
never calmer nor more kindly, but the hour had passed for a coali- 
tion. Jefferson was out for scalps, not olive branches.! 

Thus the time came when Adams had to take the bit in his 
mouth in the naming of the envoys. One day Fisher Ames had a 
long talk with him in urging Cabot, as a compliment to the 
Northern States, and the next day the envoys were named — 
with Cabot out. He was eliminated because Adams knew that 
Talleyrand was familiar with Cabot’s bitter hostility to France, 
and the President refused thus to ‘gratify the passions of a party.’ ? 
That was ominous enough; but when he disregarded the almost 
unanimous protest of the Hamiltonians and named Elbridge 
Gerry along with Pinckney and Marshall, the gage of battle was 
thrown down. From that hour, the high-flying Federalists knew 
that John Adams would be no man’s man and no man’s parrot. 
Thus early, the small cloud on the horizon widened and darkened. 

The proud old patriot of Braintree had been given a shock on 
the opening day of the extra session when Senator Tracy spread a 
lengthy letter before him on the table in the ex-cathedra manner 
of one disclosing the tablets of Moses. The squat little President 
read it with rising wrath. It was a letter from Hamilton, setting 
forth in detail ‘a whole system of instructions for the conduct of 
the President, the Senate and the House of Representatives.’ He 
read it through and returned it to Tracy. ‘I really thought the 
man was in a delirium,’ Adams wrote afterwards.® And the cloud 
on the horizon grew more ominous. 


IV 
The opening of the session found the New England Federalists 
in high glee over the prospects. The correspondence of their 
leaders discloses their grim determination to have war with France; 


1 Gibbs, 1, 463, | 8 Lodge, Cabot, from Adams’s letters in the Boston Patriot, 
8 Gibbs, 1, 483, 


846 _ JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


and if they had failed in their efforts to prevent a renewal of ne- 
gotiations, they could use the extra session for the spreading of 
war propaganda. Upon this task they entered with unprecedented 
arrogance and intolerance. 

The Message of Adams was dignified and calm, reviewing the 
situation, announcing the plans for a new attempt at negotiations, 
and urging the adoption of defensive measures in the meantime. 
The first fight came in the framing of the Reply to the Address in 
the House — and two young brilliant new members forged to the 
front to assume the aggressive leadership of the war party. The 
persuasive, polished eloquence of Ames could not be heard, for he 
was nursing himself in his fine new house at Dedham; nor, on the 
other side, could the lucid, convincing logic of Madison appear, for 
he was in retirement in Virginia. Sedgwick had been sent to the 
Senate, Fitzsimons had been defeated, Murray of Maryland was 
on his way to The Hague as Minister. On the Democratic side, 
Gallatin, Giles, and Nicholas of Virginia were to bear the brunt of 
the battle, and the two new men were to lead the Federalists with 
an audacity seldom equaled and never surpassed. These two 
young blades, Harrison Gray Otis of Boston and Robert Goodloe 
Harper of South Carolina, were in their thirty-second year. The 
former was strikingly handsome, tall and well proportioned, with 
coal-black hair, eyes blue and sparkling with vivacity, nose thin 
and patrician, complexion rosy — his presence in any assembly 
would have been felt had he remained silent, and he was seldom 
silent. In dress fastidious, in manners affable, in repartee stinging, 
in the telling of a story a master of the art: a devotee to pleasure, 
dinners, dances, and women carried for him an irresistible appeal. 
His eloquence was of a high order. A thorough aristocrat, he 
prided himself on having no illusions as to liberty and democracy, 
and he made no secret of his contempt for the masses. The rising 
of the French against the ineffable cruelties of the nobility and 
monarchy merely meant to him an attack of beasts upon the 
homes and rights of gentlemen. Speedily he became an idol of his 
party, and he enjoyed the bitter conflicts of the House as keenly 
as the dinners where he was the life of the party. 

Robert Goodloe Harper had much in common with Otis. Like 
him, Harper was a social lion and a dandy in dress. Of medium 


COMEDY AND HEROICS 347 


height, and with an uncommonly full chest which accentuated 
his pomposity, he had a handsome head and features, creating 
withal an impression of physical force and intellectual power. In 
eloquence he made up in force what he lacked in ornament. He 
had all of Giles’s bumptiousness without his consistency, and no 
member of the House approached him in insolence. Coming upon 
the scene when the conditions seemed ripe for bowling over the 
Democrats with abuse and intimidation, he fitted into the picture 
perfectly. Thus he became the outstanding orator against the 
French. True, four years before, in Charleston, he had paid court 
to the Jacobins with an assiduity that should have made him blush 
in later life — but did not. Appealing for membership in an ex- 
treme Jacobin society, he had worn the paraphernalia, spouted 
his harangues on the rights of man, paid his tribute to the Revolu- 
tion, become the vice-president of the organization — and all he 
lacked to make him a Camille Desmoulins was a table on the 
boulevards and a guillotine.!_ Now a convert to ‘law and order,’ he 
outstripped the most rabid enemies of the French. From ‘dining 
almost every day’ in 1793 at the table of the French Consul in 
Charleston, he passed without embarrassment four years later to 
the table of Liston, the British Minister.2 The rabid democrat 
had become a rabid aristocrat, and the society of the capital took 
him to its heart. In social intercourse, he was entertaining, amia- 
ble, and pleasing.’ Fond of the epicurean feast, expansive in the 
glow of women’s smiles, he became a social favorite, and his 
enemies broadly hinted that he was a master in the gentle art of 
intrigue. 

Brilliant, charming men, these two young orators of the war 
party, and it is easy to imagine the homage of the fashionable 
ladies when, after their most virulent attacks on the Democrats, 
they found themselves surrounded in Mrs. Bingham’s drawing- 
room. 

Even before Congress met, the premonitions of the coming 
Terror were in the air. With the impatient Giles, this was intoler- 

1 Thomas, Reminiscences. The Aurora, March 21, 1797, printed his application for mem- 
‘Spare nip pics June 17, 1797, asked whether he was ‘spy or parasite’ while dining with the 


French Consul. 
* Familiar Letters, 107, 


348 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


able, and he soon retired to fight elsewhere; but Gallatin de- 
termined to ignore insults, disregard abuse, and to fight for 
moderate measures to keep the door open for negotiations. He 
was of the rare few who can keep their heads in the midst of riots 
and remain calm in a tempest. For a while he could count on Giles 
for rough blows at the enemy, on Livingston for eloquence and 
courage; he would have to rely upon himself for wisdom and 
the strategy of statesmanship. 


Vv 


The Message received, the war party in the House set itself with 
zest to the framing of a bellicose Reply calculated to compromise 
the chances for a peaceful accommodation of differences. Nicholas 
of Virginia, representing the Jeffersonians, proposed a substitute, 
couched in more conciliatory language, promising a review of the 
alleged grievances of the French — and this let loose the dogs of 
war. In presenting his amendment, Nicholas deprecated the Reply 
as framed because extreme, denunciatory, and provocative and 
not calculated to assist the embassy the President was sending. 
In negotiations it would necessarily follow that there would 
be an examination of the charges made against America by the 
French.! It irritated Smith of Charleston that the Virginian 
should be ‘so wonderfully afraid of using language to irritate 
France,’ albeit he had protested against language that would 
irritate England when Jay was sailing on his mission.? Otis was 
weary of references to England’s offenses against American com- 
merce. ‘The English were stimulated to annoy our commerce 
through apprehension that we were united against them, and the 
French by a belief that we are divided in their favor.’ ® 

Livingston followed with a brilliant five-hour address, pointing 
out the flagrant violation of Article XVII of the treaty with 
France. We had made that treaty upon the basis that free bot- 
toms make free goods, and in the Jay Treaty we had abandoned 
that ground in the interest of England. Of what was it that the 
French complained? What but the adoption of the British Order 
in Council which we had not resented? Even so, she was not 
justified in her course. That she would recede in negotiations he 

1 Annals, May 22, 1797. 3 Ihd, 8 Ibid., May 23, 1797. 


COMEDY AND HEROICS 849 


had no doubt, provided we used ‘language toward her suitable to 
that liberality which befits a wise and prudent nation.’ He had no 
apology to offer for his devotion to the cause of France. ‘I could 
read by the light of the flames that consumed my paternal man- 
sion, by the joy that sparkled in every eye,’ he said, ‘how great 
were the consequences of her union with America.’! Giles fol- 
lowed, a little more severe on the Federalist discriminations for 
England against France; and Gallatin closed in a sober, dignified, 
dispassionate analysis of the phrasing of the amendment to show 
that it was firm without being offensive.’ 

Then Harper, with an elaborate speech laboriously wrought in 
seclusion, entéred the debate. The French were intemperately 
denounced, the Democrats lashed, and Monroe treated with con- 
tempt. It was a war speech, prepared as war propaganda, the 
first of his war speeches to be published and widely circulated 
throughout the country, and printed and acclaimed in England. 
Like Smith and Ames before him, he was to have his triumph in 
Downing Street. The profits of one of his war productions, which 
had a ‘prodigious sale’ in England, were given to a benevolent 
society in that country.2 The Democrats were infuriated by 
Harper’s attack, and the ‘Aurora’ truly said that he had ‘un- 
seasonably unmasked the intentions of his party.’ * When, about 
this time, Liston, the British Minister, was seen to tap the orator 
unceremoniously upon the shoulder while seated at his desk — 
for Liston was then a familiar figure upon the floor — and to 
whisper to him, Bache saw red. ‘If the French Minister had acted 
thus familiarly with Mr. Giles or Mr. Livingston, we should have 
heard something about French influence.’ > Pooh! sneered Fenno 
in the ‘Gazette,’ Liston was merely reminding Harper of a dinner 
engagement for that night. ‘Having heard it whispered,’ he added, 
‘that Mr. Harper has received an invitation to dinner from an- 
other British Agent, the Consul General, we think ourselves 
bound to mention it.’ ® Nothing could better illustrate the con- 
fident arrogance of the Federalist leaders at this time. * 

1 Annals, May 24, 1797. 2 Ihnd., May 25, 1797. 

3 Steiner, 301; Murray to McHenry boasting that Harper’s pamphlet had gone through 
several editions in England. 


4 June 1, 1797. 5 Aurora, May 31, 1797, 
$ Gazette of the United States, May 30, 1797. 


350 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


‘I am not for war,’ said Smith of Charleston. ‘I do not believe 
that the gentleman wishes for peace,’ retorted Gallatin, who had 
written four days before that ‘ Wolcott, Pickering, William Smith, 
Fisher Ames, and perhaps a few more are disposed to go to war’ 
and ‘to carry their party any length they please.’ ! Thus the de- 
bate continued until Jonathan Dayton, the Speaker, proposed a 
substitute amendment that received the support of the Demo- 
crats. Seizing upon a passage in Adams’s Message, this com- 
mended the President’s decision to seek further negotiations and 
cherished ‘the hope that a mutual spirit of conciliation and a 
disposition on the part of the United States to place France on 
grounds as favorable as other countries in their relations and con- 
nection with us, will produce an accommodation compatible with 
the engagements, rights, duties, and honor of the United States.’ ? 
With the Democrats joining the more moderate Federalists under 
Dayton, the contest was speedily ended to the disgust of the war 
party. The batteries of scurrility were turned upon the Speaker. 
‘A double-faced weather-cock,’ screamed ‘Porcupine’ the English- 
man. “His duplicity has been too bare-faced for decency. He is, 
indeed, but a shallow, superficial fellow — a bawler to the gal- 
leries, and unfit to play the cunning part he has undertaken.’ ® 

Then, after the heroics, the comedy. Matthew Lyon, a Vermont 
Democrat and a new member, shocked the formalists with a 
characterization of the practice of marching in stately procession 
to the President to present the Reply as ‘a boyish piece of busi- 
ness.’ The time had come to end the silliness. ‘Blood will tell,’ 
sneered a colleague, referring to Lyon’s humble origin. ‘I cannot 
say,’ replied Lyon, ‘that I am descended from the bastards of 
Oliver Cromwell, or his courtiers, or from the Puritans who 
punish their horses for breaking the Sabbath, or from those who 
persecuted the Quakers and burned the witches.’ 4 Some chortled, 
others snorted with rage. Vulgar Irish immigrant! But their 
wounded culture was soon soothed by a salvo from ‘Porcupine.’ 
How society must have screamed its delight in reading that Lyon 
as a child ‘had been caught in a bog, and when a whelp trans- 
ported to America’; how he had become so ‘domesticated’ that 


1 Adams, Gallatin (to Nicholson), 183-84. 2 Annals, May 30, 1797. 
§ Porcupine’s Gazette, June 3, 1797. ¢ Annals, June 3, 1797. 


COMEDY AND HEROICS 351 


Governor Crittenden’s daughter (his wife) ‘would stroke him and 
play with him as a monkey’; how ‘his gestures bear a remarkable 
affinity to the bear’ because of ‘his having been in the habit of 
associating with that species of wild beast in the mountains.’ ! 
The majority of the House, lacking Lyon’s sense of humor, con- 
tinued for a while their pompous strut through Market Street to 
read solemnly the meaningless Reply that had consumed weeks of 
futile debate. 

Then Congress proceeded to measures of defense, prohibiting 
the exportation of arms and ammunition, providing for the 
strengthening of the coast fortifications, creating a naval arma- 
ment, authorizing a detachment of militia, and adjourned. But the 
atmosphere had been one of intense party bitterness which had 
ostracized the Democrats, from Jefferson down, from the ‘society’ 
of the ‘best people.’ 


VI 


Mounted, booted, and spurred, and swinging their sabers, the 
Federalists started out to ride roughshod over their opponents. It 
was their strategy to attach a stigma to Democrats, and treat 
them as political outlaws and social outcasts. No one was to be 
spared — Jefferson least of all. A year before he had written the 
confidential letter to his friend Philip Mazzei, stating his oft- 
repeated views on the anti-republican trend in Federalist circles, 
and saying that men who had been ‘Samsons in the field and 
Solomons in the council...had had their heads shorn by the 
harlot England.’ ? Sent to an Italian paper, it was translated from 
Italian into French for a Parisian journal, as we have seen, and 
thence translated again into English for political purposes in 
America. The translators had unintentionally taken liberties with 
the text and in the final translation it was quite different from the 
original. At last, it seemed, the cautious Jefferson had delivered 
himself into the hands of his enemies, for had he not attacked 
Washington? At Alexandria, en route to Philadelphia, Jefferson 
first learned of the renewed attack in Fenno’s paper. Reaching 
the capital, he found the vials of wrath let loose upon his head. A 
politician of less self-possession or finesse would have offered some 

1 Porcupine’s Gazette, June 6, 1797. 2 Jefferson’s Works, rx, 335-37. 


352 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


explanation or defense. None of the courtesies of warfare were to 
be shown him — he was to be mobbed, his character assailed, his 
reputation blackened, his personal honor besmirched, and he was 
to be rejected socially as unfit to associate with the Harpers, 
Sedgwicks, and Wolcotts. An open letter greeted him in Fenno’s 
paper on his arrival. ‘For the honor of the American name,’ it 
read, “I would wish the letter to be a forgery, although I must 
confess that your silence. . . leaves but little probability of its not 
having proceeded from you.’! Jefferson ignored it. ‘You are the 
author of the abominable letter to Mazzei,’ ran a second open 
letter. ‘Your silence is complete evidence of your guilt.’ 2 ‘Slan- 
derer of Washington!’ ‘Assassin!’ ‘Liar!’ —and Jefferson was 
silent. 

Knowing the curative powers of time and patience, it was not 
until in August that he consulted Madison and Monroe as to his 
course. ‘Reply,’ urged the impulsive Monroe, ‘honest men will 
be encouraged by your owning and justifying the letter.’ Madison 
advised against it as more apt to givea ‘gratification and triumph’ 
to his foes. ‘Character assassin!’ ‘Libeler of Washington!’ 
‘Atheist!’ ‘Anarchist!’ ‘Liar!’ — these characterizations buzzed 
through the streets and in the drawing-rooms — and Jefferson 
was silent. 

Then an attack from a new angle. In his ‘Notes on Virginia,’ 
published years before, in paying tribute to the red men and the 
eloquence of Logan, an Indian chief, he had referred to a Colonel 
Cresap as ‘a man infamous for the many murders he had com- 
mitted on these much injured people.’ When the mass attack on 
Jefferson was at its height, a long open letter to him appeared in 
‘Porcupine’s Gazette’ from the brilliant, erratic, and usually in- 
toxicated Luther Martin, known as ‘the Federalist bull-dog,’ de- 
manding Jefferson’s authority in the name of ‘two amiable daugh- 
ters who are directly descended from that man whose character 
your pen... had endeavored to stigmatize with indelible infamy.’ 
This had been preceded by no personal note and was manifestly a 
part of the political plot to wreck him — and he was silent.‘ ‘Time 
and again Martin returned to the attack in long open letters, to be 


1 Gazette of the United States, May 19, 1797. 2 Ibid., May 30, 1797. 
* Madison’s Writings, u, 118, * Porcupine’s Gazette, July 17, 1797. 


COMEDY AND HEROICS 353 


ignored utterly as though he were as inconsequential as a ragpicker 
instead of being the leader of the Maryland Bar.1 ‘The mean and 
cowardly conduct of Mr. Jefferson,’ growled ‘Porcupine.’ ? 

An open season now for shooting at the Democratic leader, all 
the snipers were busy with their guns. At Harvard College, on 
Washington’s Birthday, there was a toast to Jefferson: “May he 
exercise his elegant literary talents for the benefit of the world in 
some retreat, secure from the troubles and danger of political life’ 
—and the Federalist papers gloated over it. Bache was seen 
entering Jefferson’s rooms, and a Gallic conspiracy loomed before 
the affrighted vision of Fenno. ‘The brat may gasp,’ he promised, 
“but it will surely die in the infamy of its parents.’ 4 Jefferson a 
man of the people? snorted ‘Porcupine.’ ‘So is the swindling 
bankrupt Charles Fox who is continually vilifying his own gov- 
ernment and stands ready to sell his country to France.’> No- 
thing angered ‘Porcupine’ more than Jefferson’s suggestion in his 
‘Notes on Virginia’ that British freedom had crossed the Atlantic. 
Freedom would live in England, he growled, when Jefferson’s 
‘head will be rotting cheek by jowl with that of some toil-killed 
negro slave,’ and when nothing would be remembered of Jefferson 
“save thy cruel, unprovoked, and viperous slander of the family of 
Cresap.’® And Jefferson was silent. 

Philadelphia was a city of but seventy-five thousand people. 
The papers were generally read, or their contents were at any rate 
the talk of the town. They formed the topic for ladies at their 
teas. Their husbands were sulphurous in their attacks at the 
breakfast table. And Jefferson became, in the fashionable circles, 
a moral monster unfit to drink whiskey with a roué of the morally 
bankrupt French nobility at the table of the Binghams. He was 
ostracized. It was at this time that he wrote Edward Rutledge 
that “men who have been intimate all their lives cross the street 
to avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way lest they be 
obliged to touch their hats.’7 To his daughter Martha, he wrote 


1 Porcupine’s Gazette, December 14, 1797, January 13, 1798. It was this Luther Martin 
who assailed Jefferson so bitterly in connection with his defense of Aaron Burr in the trial 
for treason. 

2 Ihnid., January 29, 1798. 

8 Gazette of the United States, March 6, 1798, 4 Tbid., April 18, 1798. 

5 Porcupine’s Gazette, July 5, 1797. $ Jind., October 23, 1797. 

7 Jefferson’s Works, rx, 408-11. 


354 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


of his disgust with the ‘jealousies, the hatreds and the malignant 
passions,’ ! and of the ‘politics and party hatreds [that] seem like 
salamanders to consider fire as their element.’ ? 

Under these conditions he dropped out of the social life of the 
capital. In the evenings he consulted with his political associates; 
during the day he presented a calm, unruffled complacency to his 
enemies in the Senate over whom he presided with scrupulous 
impartiality. Driven from society, he found consolation in the 
little rooms of the Philosophical Society, among the relics of his 
friends Rittenhouse and Franklin. 

With such abuse visited on Jefferson, it is easy to imagine the 
fate of his less important friends. Sam Adams was the laughing- 
stock of the silk stockings. Franklin was considered as base as 
Jefferson. ‘Some person left at my house this morning a copy of 
Old Franklin’s works, or rather plagiarisms,’ wrote ‘Porcupine.’ 
‘I look upon everything which this unclean old fellow had a hand 
in to be contaminated and contaminating,’ * and the time was to 
come when a Federalist mob raging through the streets of Phila- 
delphia would throw rocks through Bache’s windows and besmear 
Franklin’s statue with mud. Tom Paine, always a fair mark, was 
written down in print as a libertine. ‘Porcupine’s Gazette,’ which 
was the favorite journal in the cultured homes of the pure at heart, 
had a story that Paine had been ‘caught on his knees at a lady’s 
feet by her husband,’ and had explained that he was ‘only measur- 
ing your lady for stays,’ at which the delighted husband ‘kissed 
and thanked him for his politeness.’ 4 Because John Swanwick, a 
popular young Philadelphia merchant, had cast his lot with the 
Democrats, blocked the plans at the meeting of the merchants on 
the Jay Treaty, and defeated Fitzsimons for Congress, he was 
venomously assailed. When he toasted ‘ The Rights of Women’ at 
a Democratic banquet, ‘Porcupine’ sneered that he did well ‘to 
turn out a volunteer,’ for ‘no lady will ever give a bounty for his 
services.’ 5 That he was a conscienceless rascal may be inferred 
from ‘Porcupine’s’ suggestion that his ‘consummate wisdom and 
patriotism’ had been shown, when, in the legislature, he had 


1 Domestic Life, 245. 2 Tbid., 249. 
® Porcupine’s Gazette, December 4, 1797. 4 4 Ibid., June 14, 1797. 
§ Ihid., July 11, 1797. ‘i 


COMEDY AND HEROICS 355 


‘sought to procure a law preventing imprisonment for debt.’ ? 
Fatally ill at the time, ‘Porcupine’ followed him with indecent 
sneers to his grave.? 

Nor were even the Democratic women spared, and the Federal- 
ists’ favorite journal sneered repeatedly at the wife of Justice 
M’Kean. ‘Why is Mrs. M’Kean like a taylor? Because she trims 
her good man’s jacket.’ ? ‘I have no objections to their toasting 
Judge M’Kean’ — at a banquet — ‘but the unmannerly brutes 
might have added his lady.’ 4 Even the Judge’s famously beauti- 
ful daughter was not spared, and during her courtship by the 
Spanish Minister, Don Carlos de Yrujo, the fashionable circles 
were snickering behind their fans over ‘Porcupine’s’ comment that 
“what were his motives in commencing the suit we shall leave our 
readers to divine.’* Giles was ‘Farmer Giles,’ who descended 
‘from the lowest grade of gentleman’ — ‘a gambler at heart’ — 
devotee of the race-track, and ‘the infamous faro table.’ © Monroe 
was infamous, and even gentle, cultured old Dr. Logan, ’neath 
whose magnificent trees at ‘Stenton’ Mrs. Washington had passed 
delightful afternoons, became a cross between a clown and arascal. 
No Democrat was spared. 

The Democrats, overwhelmed, were comparatively tame, but 
the publication of Hamilton’s pamphlet on his relations with Mrs. 
Reynolds, necessitated as he foolishly thought by the book of the 
notorious Callender, made him an easy mark for the Democratic 
scandal-mongers. In July he had appeared in Philadelphia to 
secure affidavits from Monroe and Muhlenberg — ‘an attesta- 
tion,’ as Bache phrased it, ‘of his having cuckolded James Rey- 
nolds.’ It was understood that ‘his man Oliver [Wolcott] had 
made out an affidavit as long as your arm,’ but that others were 
desired ‘to patch up the threads and fragments of his character.’ 
Soon, said Bache, ‘our ex-Secretary expects to be brought to bed 
of his pamphlet containing love-sick epistles.’7 When it was 
printed three months later, Bache published a letter from New 
York to the effect that it had appeared in the morning ‘and at six 
o'clock in the evening the town rings with it.’ But ‘the women 


1 Porcupine’s Gazette, November 8, 1797. 2 Itid., November 10, 1797. 
3 Iid., August 8, 1797. 4 Ibid., July 5, 1797. 
5 Ibid., August 8, 1797. * Gazette of the United States, April 5, 1797, " 


7 Aurora, July 19, 1797, 


356 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


cry out against it as if its publication was high treason against the 
rights of women.’ } 

It was impossible for the ostracism of Democrats, however, to 
blur the social brilliancy of the season. Pinckney found his 
evenings crowded ‘with plays, public and private,’ and his dinner 
invitations ‘abundant.’? Subscription dances, bri‘liant dinners 
every night, elaborate entertainments, a giddy whirl. The diplo- 
mats were particularly lavish, none so much so as Liston, the 
British Minister, at whose table Otis, Harper, Sedgwick, Wolcott 
were frequent guests, and he was on terms of such familiarity with 
the President that they sometimes strolled together in the streets. 
But everywhere in the fashionable houses the Jeffersonians were 
excluded, if not by lack of invitation, by the offensive coldness of 
their reception. The play-houses were packed, albeit the enter- 
tainment was sometimes so vulgar and obscene that fathers in- 
dignantly left with their daughters. Everywhere politics was on 
a rampage, and even at the dinner table of President Adams the 
passions seethed. ‘By God, I would rather see this world anni- 
hilated,’ shouted Blair McClanachan, ‘than see this country 
united with Great Britain.’* ‘I dine next Tuesday at Court,’ 
wrote Gallatin to his wife, ‘Courtland dining there the other day 
heard Her Majesty, as she was asking the names of different mem- 
bers of Congress of Hindman, being told of some of the aristo- 
cratic party, say, “Ah, that is one of OUR people.” So that she is 
Mrs. President, not of the United States, but of a faction.’ ® 


VII 


This rabid spirit was not a little inspired by the press, which, in 
turn, was encouraged by the politicians. A new Knight of Scur- 
rility had entered the lists, encouraged by Hamilton, armed with 
a pen that flowed poison. He had previously distinguished himself 
by his brilliant and abusive pamphlets attacking Priestley, the 
Democratic Societies, and the Irish, and by his exhibition in his 
shop window of pictures of George III and Lord North, with 
Franklin and Sam Adams coupled with fools or knaves. His un- 


1 Aurora, October 10, 1797. salt Pinckney, Life of Pinckney, 179. 
§ Porcupine’s Gazette, March 10, 1798, has a letter quoting some of the filthy lines, 
¢ Adams, Gallatin, 185-86, § Ibid., 184-85, | 


COMEDY AND HEROICS 357 


limited capacity for abuse, his insane fury agajnst the French 
Revolution, his unfathomable contempt for democracy, his de- 
votion to England, fitted in with the spirit of society, and William 
Cobbett launched his ‘Porcupine’s Gazette’ under the most dis- 
tinguished patronage. In his first issue, in an open letter to Bache, 
he had described the ‘Aurora’ as a ‘vehicle of lies and sedition.’ 
This was his keynote. Soon the Federalists were reading ‘Porcu- 
pine’ as a Bible, and the editors were making journalism a matter. 
of blackguardism, of black eyes and bloody noses. In blood and. 
breeding, Cobbett was inferior to Freneau, Bache, or Duane, but 
he was a more consummate master of satire than any of them. He 
could string chaste words into a scorpion lash that Swift would, 
have envied, or stoop to an obscenity and vulgarity that would 
have delighted Kit Marlowe in his cups. None but a genius could, 
have risen from his original low estate, with so little education. 
But a little while before a corporal in the British army, and still a 
citizen of England, his English biographer makes the point that 
the happiest days of his life were those when he edited the Fed- 
eralists’ favorite journal because ‘he was fighting for his country.’ ! 
Nothing pleased him more than to lash and lambaste the old heroes 
of the American Revolution, Jefferson, Franklin, Paine, and Sam 
Adams, and he could not only do it with impunity, but to the ap- 
plause of society. Fenno sought to keep pace, in his weak way, 
and Bache tried to match him in abuse. The fur flew. There were 
physical assaults and rumors of assaults. The time was approach- 
ing when Bache would have to barricade himself with a few armed. 
friends in his office to protect his life and property from the de- 
struction of a Federalist mob; when he would be set upon by 
ruffians and beaten, and when he would exchange blows with 
Fenno in the street. ‘The white-livered, black-hearted thing 
Bache, that public pest and bane of decency,’ wrote ‘Porcupine,’ 
and the ladies of Mrs. Bingham’s circle agreed that Mr. Cobbett 
was tremendously clever.? 

It was a feverish summer, fall, and winter. Public dinners were 
the fashion, bristling with fighting toasts. Through these the 
Jeffersonians sought to keep up the courage of their party. Al- 
ways toasts to the French Republic, and always toasts to the Irish 

1 Melville, 1, 108. ? Porcupine’s Gazette, August 4, 1797. 


358 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


patriots — ‘May the Irish harp be speedily torn from the British 
willow and made to vibrate to a revolutionary tune.’ References 
to Jay’s Treaty were followed by the playing of ‘The Dead March.’ 
Franklin, Jefferson, Monroe — these were invariably honored.! 
The Federalists penetrated the Jeffersonian stronghold of Phila- 
delphia with a banquet at the Cameron Tavern, Southwark, with 
warlike toasts, and with Harper as the hero,” and a few days later 
the ‘young men’ of this district met to pass ringing resolutions en- 
dorsing the ‘wisdom and integrity’ of the Administration. One 
courageous soul moved to strike out the word ‘wisdom,’ and the 
crowd struck him out instead; whereupon a few gathered about 
and cheered for Jefferson.’ 

But the most notable banquet was in honor of Monroe in Phila- 
delphia. Reaching the city, the former Minister to France left the 
boat with Mrs. Monroe, to be summarily ordered back by the 
health officers until he had ‘undergone the usual formalities of 
examination.’ Short shrift for Democrats was the order of the 
day, and the returning Minister of his Government to another na- 
tion returned with his wife to remain on board until ‘examined.’ 
Such was the morbid madness of the Federalists of this period that 
it was considered a triumph for the Administration to hold the 
former Minister and his wife with the immigrants. ‘Porcupine’ 
roared with glee in his best barrack-room manner.‘ When finally 
released, Monroe went into conference immediately with Jeffer- 
son, Gallatin, and Burr, and for two hours the leaders listened to a 
detailed story of his mission. Gallatin, who had refrained up to 
this time from expressing an opinion on Monroe’s conduct, was 
convinced, from his conversation, ‘manner, and everything,’ that 
he was ‘possessed of integrity superior to all attacks of malignity,’ 
and had conducted himself ‘with irreproachable honor and the 
most dignified sense of duty.’ When the conference was over, 
Gallatin, at least, felt that the ‘Administration have acted with 
a degree of meanness only exceeded by their folly.’ ® 

This became the view of the Jeffersonians generally. A dinner 
was given at O’Eller’s Hotel, with General Horatio Gates in the 


1 Aurora, April 14, July 11 and 13, 1797. 
2 Gazette of the United States, April 23, 1797. 8 Tbid., May 1, 1797. 
4 Porcupine’s Gazette, July 1, 1797. 5 Adams, Gallatin (to his wife), 186-87. 


COMEDY AND HEROICS 359 


chair. There was Jefferson, and there, too, were Burr, Livingston, 
Gallatin, Tazewell, Judge M’Kean, the Governor, and fifty mem- 
bers of Congress. With enthusiasm they drank to the freedom of 
Ireland, and on the invitation of Gates they lifted their glasses 
with cheers to ‘Charles James Fox and the Patriots of England’ — 
a frequently recurring Jeffersonian toast of the times. Livingston 
proposed — ‘Monroe, the virtuous citizen, who, to keep the peace 
of the country, refuses to do justice to himself.’ Monroe responded 
in a brief speech, unexceptionable in every way, but Gallatin pre- 
dicted, in a letter to his wife, that ‘Porcupine & Co. will roundly 
abuse us.’? And Gallatin was right, for that was ‘Porcupine’s’ 
business. ‘At some tavern in the city,’ ran the ‘Porcupine’ ac- 
count, ‘a most ludicrous farce called ‘‘The Welcome of Citizen 
Monroe” was performed. The principal characters were the 
Virginia Philosopher, Mrs. M’Kean’s husband, and Monsieur 
Citizen Tazewell of the ancient dominion commonly called the 
Land of Debts.’ ? Livingston was wrong, however, in his notion 
that Monroe would remain silent. Urged on by the Jeffersonians, 
he prepared a defense which was given a nation-wide circulation 
through the exertions of his fellow partisans. Jefferson was satis- 
fied, the Federalists enraged. ‘A wicked misrepresentation of the 
facts,’ though ‘many applaud it,’ wrote Wolcott.‘ 

Meanwhile, the envoys were lost in the mists of the sea, and 
nothing had reached the public regarding their reception. In 
November, the atmosphere charged with the electricity of war, 
Adams returned to the capital from his seat at Braintree, to be 
escorted with military pomp into the city. The war propagandists 
were good psychologists sometimes. When Governor Mifflin, 
Democrat, ordered out the militia to parade in the President’s 
honor, ‘Porcupine’ graciously declared it ‘the first decent act he 
had ever been guilty of.’ > On the night of his arrival there was a 
dinner at O’Eller’s in honor of ‘His Serene Highness of Braintree,’ 
as. Bache put it, and so noisy was the demonstration that ‘some 
ignorant people imagined a boxing match was on the carpet.’ ¢ 

1 Adams, Gallatin, 187; description of banquet, Aurora, July 17, 1797. 
2 Porcupine’s Gazette, July 3, 1797. 
8 Jefferson’s Works (to Mercer), rx, 421; (to Madison), rx, 405-07, 


4 Gibbs, 1, 12, 5 Porcupine’s Gazette, November 6, 1797. 
® Aurora, November 15, 1797. 


360 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


This was the spirit of the hour when Congress met in November — 
the bitterness among the members fully as intense as among the 
loungers in the streets. 


VIII 


And yet it was not to be without its touch of comedy. Before 
the crisis came, two incidents had set the country roaring. Mat- 
thew Lyon, the Vermont Democrat, was a constant provocation 
to the Federalists. Hot-tempered, ardent, uncouth in his manners, 
but thoroughly honest at heart, he had outraged the clubby spirit 
of the Federalists. During the Revolution he had been shamefully 
cashiered for an act deserving of a medal, but almost immediately 
he had been vindicated. The vindication was thoroughly under- 
stood in Philadelphia, but it suited the purpose of his political foes 
to ignore the facts for the benefit of the slander. 

The House was sitting, but in a state of confusion — every one 
including the Speaker talking — Lyon holding forth in conversa- 
tion on the ease with which Connecticut could be converted to 
Democracy through a Democratic paper in that. State. Roger 
Griswold, a Federalist leader, made a slurring reference to Lyon’s 
‘wooden sword.’ The latter, hearing it, preferred to ignore the in- 
sult. Whereupon Griswold, following him and plucking at his coat, 
repeated the slander. At this Lyon made an unpardonable blunder 
— instead of slapping Griswold’s face, he spat in it. Instantly the 
Federalists were in ferment. The ‘little beast’ was unfit to as- 
sociate with gentlemen, anyway, and should be expelled. There 
was an investigation, with denunciatory speeches as indecent as 
the act denounced. The purpose was clear — to get rid of Lyon’s 
vote. The Jeffersonians thereupon rallied to his support.* Neither 
condoning the act nor asking that it go unpunished, Gallatin op- 
posed the expulsion resolution on the ground that Congress was 
not a fashionable club and had no right to deprive a district of its 
representation on the basis of manners. A two-thirds vote was 
necessary to expel, and this was lacking. It was a party vote. 

A few days later, Lyon was seated at his desk buried in papers, 
oblivious to his surroundings, and Griswold, armed with a hickory 
stick, approached from the rear and began striking him on the 
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COMEDY AND HEROICS 361 


could extricate himself from his desk. Then, grasping some coal 
tongs, he advanced on Griswold, who, finding his enemy also 
armed, gallantly retreated, striking wildly. They clinched, rolled 
on the floor, and colleagues intervened. Here was another insult 
to the dignity of the House, but the Federalists were delighted 
with it. Since nothing could be done to Lyon without doing as 
much to Griswold, the matter was dropped. The scribes fell upon 
the morsel with a zest, the first political caricature in American 
history resulted, the public shrugged its shoulders and laughed, 
Jefferson thought the whole affair ‘dirty business,’ ! but Gallatin, 
quite as much of a gentleman as Otis, thought that ‘nobody can 
blame Lyon for resenting the insult,’ since there was ‘a notable 
lack of delicacy in the conversation of most Connecticut gentle- - 
men.’ ? Fenno called Lyon a ‘filthy beast.’ ‘Porcupine,’ who had 
rather urged that some one spit in the Jace of Bache, gloated over 
Griswold’s assault,? dubbed those who voted against expulsion 
‘Knights of the Wooden Sword,’ * and virtuously resolved ‘to 
make the whole business as notorious as the courage of Alexander 
or the cruelty of Nero.’ > Speaker Dayton, whom he had recently 
denounced as a ‘double-faced weather-cock,’ having voted for ex- 
pulsion, became an ornament over whom ‘New Jersey has indeed 
new reason to boast.’ ® The real significance of the incident was 
that the war party had fared forth, chesty and cocky, to intimidate 
the Jeffersonians and had met a check — but they were to have 
another chance at Lyon.’ 


1 Jefferson’s Works, x, 19-22. ? Adams, Gallatin (to Mrs. Gallatin), 191. 
3 Porcupine’s Gazette, February 16, 1798. * Ivd., February 9, 1798. 
5 Iind., February 15, 1798. 6 Ihnd., February 14, 1798. 


7 Haticy Adams says: ‘Lyon, though a very rough specimen of democracy, was by no 
means a contemptible man, and, politics aside, showed energy and character in his subse- 
quent career.” (Adams, Gallatin, 192.) 


CHAPTER XVI 
HYSTERICS 


I 


HE meeting of Congress in the early winter of 1797 found 

the war party in fine fettle and the Jeffersonians fighting 
desperately for peace. Early in the session, Adams called for the 
advice of his Cabinet on the policy to be pursued in the event of 
the failure of the envoys. The three Hamiltonian members had 
conferred and McHenry was instructed to write Hamilton for 
instructions. ‘I am sure I cannot do Justice to the subject as you 
can,’ wrote the Secretary of War to the President’s enemy in New 
York. Agreeing, no doubt, with the sentiment, the power behind 
the Cabinet speedily complied, and the response to the President 
of his advisers was the recommendations of Hamilton copied 
into the handwriting of McHenry.! These did not contemplate a 
declaration of war, but a resort to warlike measures. Merchant 
vessels should be armed, twenty sloops of the line built, an imme- 
diate army of sixteen thousand men recruited with provision for 
twenty thousand more, the French treaty abrogated, a loan au- 
thorized, and the tax system put upon a war basis. An alliance 
with England? Not improper, perhaps, but inexpedient; though 
Rufus King in London should make overtures to the British for a 
loan, the aid of convoys, perhaps the transfer of ten ships of the 
line, and, in the event of a definite rupture with France, he should 
be authorized to work out a plan of coéperation with England.? 
All this while the debates in Congress were increasing in bitter- 
ness. Monroe was accused and defended, democrats denounced 
and damned, aristocrats and monocrats assailed. Orators were 
mobilized and paraded in war-paint spluttering their most vituper- 
ative phrases, and the most insignificant pack-horse of the war 
party attacked Jefferson’s letter to Mazzei as ‘a disgraceful per- 
formance.’ * The chest of the flamboyant Harper was never se 


1 Steiner, 291, 295. 3 Adams, Works, 1, 515-17. 
® Coit, Annals, February 28, 1798. 


HYSTERICS 363 


protuberant as in those days when he strutted through the Dic- 
tionary hurling the most offensive words in the language at the 
Jeffersonians, rattling his sword, waving his pistol, and offering 
to meet gentlemen outside the House. All revolutions he thought 
the work of fools and knaves, philosophers, Jacobins, and sans- 
culottes. ‘The Jeffersonians were conspiring to prostrate popular 
liberty and establish tyranny by curtailing the power of the Ex- 
ecutive and increasing the power of the House. It was all very sim- 
ple. The President crushed, the Senate next destroyed, three or 
four audacious demagogues would dominate the House until the 
strongest cut the throats of the others and seized the scepter. The 
Federalists were delighted — what a wonderful man was Harper! ! 
Day by day the violence increased. Harper snapped at Giles, who 
snapped back, and when Otis made a nasty attack on the Virginian 
and the latter dared him to repeat it ‘out of doors,’ there were 
loud cries of ‘order.’ Only Gallatin remained cool, in possession 
of his senses. He contented himself with the assertion that only on 
information that had not been given could war measures be ex- 
cused.” 

The superheat of the House cooled the passions of the people 
and remonstrances against the arming of merchant ships poured in. 
Even from New England they came, maddening to Cabot and 
Ames, reassuring to Jefferson, who made the most of them in his 
correspondence.? When the town meeting at Cambridge joined 
the remonstrators, the Boston ‘Centinel’ fumed over ‘the in- 
decent abuse of the merchants,’ and the ‘forestalling knavery’ of 
the town. Then, to revive the failing spirits of the war party, 
Adams came to the rescue with a Message announcing the failure 
of the envoys and recommending warlike measures. How the 
little patriot would have winced had he known that in adopting the 
recommendations of McHenry he was accepting the dictations of 
Alexander Hamilton! Jefferson wrote Madison that it was ‘an 
insane message,’ and the Jeffersonians, no longer doubting that 
war was the purpose, arranged to force a show-down.’ Thus ap- 
peared the Sprigg Resolutions providing for purely defensive 


1 Annals, March 2, 1798. 2 Ibid., March 13, 1798. 
* Jefferson’s Works, 1x, 437-39. # April 14, 1798. 
§ Jefferson’s Works, 1x, 405-07. 


364 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


measures for the coast and the interior, and declaring that ‘under 
existing conditions it is not expedient for the United States to re- 
sort to war against the French Republic.’ } 

Momentarily taken unaware, the Federalists were stunned. 
Harper blundered into the admission that he could see no objec- 
tions, but Otis, with keener insight, proposed to substitute the 
word ‘declare’ for ‘resort to’ war — and the cat was out of the 
bag. The Jeffersonians feared, not so much a declaration of war as 
warlike measures that would force a state of war, and to forestall 
that was the purpose of the Resolutions. Thus the debate pro- 
ceeded, more bitter and personal, with Giles and Harper resem- 
bling the wenches of the fishmarket without their skirts. 

Meanwhile, the Federalist leaders were familiar with the X Y Z 
papers of which the Democrats were kept in ignorance. Hamilton, 
private citizen of New York, knew their contents; Jefferson, Vice- 
President of the United States, did not. This was the trump card 
of the war party, and no one saw it so quickly as Hamilton, who 
immediately began to work secretly, through his agents in the 
Cabinet, for their publication. ‘N othing certainly can be more 
proper,’ he wrote Pickering. ‘Confidence will otherwise be want- 
ing.’ ? In utter ignorance of their contents, the Jeffersonians began 
to demand their production. Only a few days before, the Jeffer- 
sonian organ in Boston was charging that Adams withheld the 
papers because they ‘contain an account of some resentful ex- 
pressions of the French respecting our Cabinet, and Mr. Adams 
does not expect any credit by publishing them.’ ? Thus, when the 
motion was made that the papers be produced, Gallatin, Giles, 
Livingston, and Nicholas supported it, and the next day they were 
sent with the request that they be considered in confidence until 
the effect of their publication could be discussed. 

The galleries were cleared — the doors locked and guarded — 
and for three days and into the fourth the secret discussion con- 
tinued. Then the doors were opened and the crowd in the gal- 
leries heard a brief discussion of the number of copies to be printed 
for circulation. ‘One thousand, two hundred,’ said Bayard of 
Delaware. ‘Three thousand,’ urged Harper. ‘Seven thousand,’ 


4 Annals, March 27, 1798. * Hamilton’s Works, x, 279. 
* Independent Chronicle, March 26, 1798, 


{ 


HYSTERICS 865 


sneered the hot-headed Matthew Lyon, ‘for the papers are so 
trifling and unimportant that no printer would risk the printing of 
them in a pamphlet.’ Otis incredulously inquired if he had rightly 
understood the Vermont fire-eater. Lyon unblushingly repeated 
his strange assertion. The suggestion of Bayard was adopted, and, 
when the members filed out of the little room in which they de- 
liberated that day, Harper and the war hawks could already hear 
the thunder of the guns. 


a § 


Thus did the shadows close in on the Jeffersonians. The blow 
was staggering. On the appearance of the damaging documents, 
most of the Democratic papers were silent, while printing them in 
full. One made a brave show of satisfaction by criticizing Adams 
for withholding them so long, and suggesting that perhaps ‘the 
most important papers’ had been withheld.! Even the buoyancy 
of Jefferson suffered a momentary collapse. Writing Madison the 
day the papers were read, he did not have the heart to indicate the 
nature of their contents.? The next day he had recovered suffi- 
ciently to write that his first impressions were ‘very disagreeable 
and confused,’ and that this would be the first impression of the 
public. A more mature consideration, he thought, would disclose 
no new ground for war, but war psychology and fear of false im- 
putations might drive the people to the war hawks.? Madison, 
equally astonished, thought Talleyrand’s conduct ‘incredible,’ 
not because of its ‘depravity, which, however heinous, is not with- 
out example,’ but because of its ‘unparalleled stupidity.’ 4 Mon- 
roe, who had spent the night with Madison in Virginia, thought 
the incident ‘evidently a swindling experin\ent,’ which was clear 
enough on its face.’ The public, in the meantime, was reading one 
of the most grotesque stories of political infamy and personal 
cupidity on record. The envoys had been treated with contempt, 
refused an audience, insulted by unofficial blackmailers sent by 
the unscrupulous Talleyrand to demand a loan for France and, 
more particularly, a bribe for himself. The envoys had conducted 


1 New York Time Piece, April 13, 1798. 
* Jefferson’s Works, x, 22-24. \Ibid., x, 24-26, 
* Madison’s Writings, u, 133. \Ibid. (to Jefferson), 1, 133. 


366 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


themselves with becoming dignity and spirit. ‘Millions for de- 
fense, but not one cent for tribute,’ was a clarion call to battle. 
The pride of the people was touched, and overnight the political 
complexion of the country had been changed. A wave of hys- 
terical patriotism swept over the Nation, and the war hawks set 
to work to turn it into frenzy. It was now or never. 


III 


For once John Adams was on top of the world. He who had so 
longed for popularity had found it. Everywhere, in cities, on 
Southern plantations, under the primeval forests of the frontiers, 
men were wildly waving flags and saluting the President. Ad- 
dresses pledging life and fortune poured in to be prominently 
printed in the papers, and nowhere more than in the Jeffersonian 
States.! Most were the spontaneous expressions of an excited 
people, some were unquestionably engineered by the politicians.? 
But on the surface the country was aflame. Down the Phila- 
delphia streets one day swung twelve hundred young men, keep- 
ing step to martial music, the streets lined with the cheering popus 
lace, and, as ‘Porcupine’ observed, with ‘every female in the city 
whose face is worth looking at’ gladdening ‘the way with her 
smiles.’ ? At Adams’s house the little man, who had always wanted 
to be a warrior, appeared on the steps to greet them, wearing a 
cockade, in full military regalia, his sword dangling at his side. 
Intoxicated by the adulation, he plunged iImpetuously into a 
denunciation of France and its Revolution. Madison thought his 
language ‘the most abominable and degrading that could fall 
from the lips of a first magistrate of an independent people, and 
particularly from a Revolutionary patriot.2® Aroused by the 
philippic of the President, the young men spent the day marching 
the streets, and in the evening wined and dined until ten o'clock, 
when they sallied forth to exercise their patriotism in deeds of 
violence. The Terror had begun. Reeling and shouting, they bore 
down upon the home of Bache. With only women and children 
in the house, they fell in right gallant fashion on the doors and 


1 Centinel, May 30, 1798. ? Independent Chronicle, November 22, 1798, 
* Porcupine’s Gazette, May 7, 1798. 4 Ibid., May 7, 1798. 
§ Madison’s Writings (to Jefferson), m, 142, 


HYSTERICS 367 


windows and were making headway when the neighbors interfered 
and sent the drunken youngsters upon their way.! But with the 
war hawks, the attack on the home of Bache was not least among 
the virtues of the mob, and the Federalist press was unstinted in 
its praise. 

Then, on May 9th, came the day of fasting and prayer, set by 
Adams in happy ignorance that when he yielded to the importu- 
nities of Pickering for a proclamation, he was again acting under 
the direction of the hated Hamilton.? The President had worked 
himself into a morbid state of mind. Some mysterious wag had 
sent him a warning that the city would be burned that night. The 
Jeffersonians smiled and shrugged their shoulders, and one editor 
suggested that, since the conflagration was promised for the fast 
day, ‘the incendiaries meant political or ecclesiastical fire.’ ? But 
Adams, taking it seriously, saw conspirators all about, incendi- 
aries, assassins. Determined to die resisting at his post, he had 
his servants carry arms and ammunition into the house by the 
back way to withstand a siege. 

The day was quiet enough, with business suspended and the 
churches filled. Preachers pounced upon the Democrats and in- 
fidels with demoniac fury. But in the evening the Terror came — 
and even as an old man Adams could recall it only with a shudder. 
The Administration papers of the time, eager to paint the picture 
black, could find nothing serious to report, however. A few butcher 
boys, none the wiser for drink, exercised their lungs in the State 
House yard until the soldiers swept down upon them, arresting 
a few who were dismissed on the morrow, and frightening the 
others home.? But that was not the only mob that roved the 
streets that night. The patriots had their inning, too, smashing 
the windows of Bache’s house and smearing the statue of that 
filthy Democrat, Benjamin Franklin, with mud from the gutters. 
The war propagandists fairly fluttered with activity. Hopkin- 
son’s new song, ‘Hail Columbia,’ was wildly cheered at the thea- 
ters, much to the disgust of the Democrats, who resented the com- 

1 Bache in a statement ascribed the incident to the intoxicated condition of the youths, 
Time Piece, May 14, 1798. 
2 Hamilton’s Works, x, 275-79. 


3 Independent Chronicle, May 10, 1798. 
* Gazette of the United States, May 10; Porcupine’s Gazette, May 10, 1798, 


368 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


plimentary reference to Adams,! and, when the author was soon 
given a Government position, it was suggested that Hopkinson 
had certainly ‘written his song to the right tune.’ 2 When Fox the 
actor sang the song at the theater in Baltimore, it was observed 
that ‘some Jacobins left the room.’ * Even this hysteria did not 
satisfy the war hawks who stood in the wings beating tom-toms 
and crying, “War! War! War!’ Hamilton was urging Washington 
‘under some pretext of health’ to tour Virginia and North Caro- 
lina to give occasion for dinners and warlike addresses. From his 
retreat at Dedham, Fisher Ames was writing nervously to Picker- 
ing that “we must make haste to wage war or we shall be lost.’ 
Hopkinson, the song-writer, observing the serenity of New York, 
was wishing that he were a despot that he might ‘order the whole 
city to undergo the Turkish ceremony of the bastinado’ and ‘rouse 
the lazy drones with a whip.’® In far-off Lisbon, William Smith 
was nauseated with ‘the old womanish whining about our reluc- 
tance to war.’ ® 

Then John Marshall returned and the tired voices of the 
shouters found a tonic. Out to Kensington they went to meet him, 
sour-visaged Pickering in a carriage looking stern and warlike de- 
spite his spectacles, three companies of cavalry on prancing steeds, 
citizens and Congressmen in conveyances or on horseback. Long 
before the town was reached, ‘the streets and windows, even the 
housetops in many instances, were crowded with people.’’ The 
bells in the steeple of Christ Church began to peal, and peal they 
did far into the night. The reverberations of cannon mingled with 
the huzzas of the populace as the procession moved slowly on 
through as many streets as possible to the City Tavern. ‘All this 
was to secure him to their views that he might say nothing that 
would oppose the game they were playing,’ Jefferson wrote Madi- 
son.* The next morning the war party thronged the tavern, a 
dinner was given, and there was much satisfaction when Jefferson, 
who had called, was unable to see the hero.? Livingston, who had 
accompanied Marshall from New York, had been assured that 


1 Aurora, April 27, 1798. 2 Independent Chronicle, May 21, 1798. 
® New York Commercial Advertiser, October 19, 1798. 4 Ames, 1, 232-35, 

5 Gibbs (to Wolcott), u, 49. 6 Thid., m, 117-20. 

7 Porcupine’s Gazette, June 20, 1798, 8 Jefferson’s Works, x, 45-538, 


® Beveridge, 11, 346-47. 


HYSTERICS 369 


France had no thought of war, but soon stories were afluat through 
the city, as emanating from the envoy, of a contradictory nature.! 

Again the prancing of cavalry in the streets when Marshall de- 
parted for Virginia —a series of ovations all the way.? Then 
Pinckney returned — and more pageants. Soldiers and citizens 
vied at Princeton and Trenton, and a dinner was given and the 
French damned.? All the time the country was being over- 
whelmed with propaganda such as it had never known before. 
Hamilton was writing his bitter invectives against the French,‘ in 
which France was ‘a den of pillage and slaughter’ and Frenchmen 
‘foul birds of prey.’ These letters, running in Fenno’s paper, 
alarmed Jefferson, who wrote to prod Madison from the lethargy 
of retirement. ‘Sir, take up your pen against this champion. You 
know the ingenuity of his talents, and there is not a person but 
yourself who can foil him. For heaven’s sake, then, take up your 
pen and do not desert the public cause entirely.’ > But even more 
damaging than the pen of Hamilton was that of William Cobbett, 
‘Peter Porcupine.’ As a manufacturer of horrors he makes the 
wildest propagandists of the World War pale like a candle held 
against the sun. Childishly happy was the ‘Porcupine’ of those 
days when he could fight, on American soil, ‘for his country’ and 
his King. Thus ‘the sans-culottes’ had ‘taken vessels off the bar 
at Charleston’ and the French had landed and were plundering 
farmhouses.’ Thus a French invasion plot was discovered. ‘Por- 
cupine’ had the particulars. The negro slaves were to be armed 
and used as allies against the whites. ‘What a pretty figure 
Nicholas and Giles will cut,’ wrote the jubilant Peter, ‘when 
Citizen Pompey and Citizen Cesar shall have tied their hands 
behind them. ... Could its miseries be confined to these, I would 
say, God hasten it.’’7 ‘Gaunt Gallatin’ working hard all night? 
Useless, useless — ‘war, frightful war there will be in spite of all 
his teeth and his nails too.’ § And then again, the invasion. Rumor 
had it that the French were buying three thousand stand of arms 


1 Jefferson’s Works, x, 45-53. 2 Beveridge, 1, 348. 

3 New York Commercial Advertiser, October 31, November 5, 1798. 
4 ‘Titus Manlius,’ Hamilton’s Works, v, 259-301. 

5 Jefferson’s Works, x, 22-24. 

® Porcupine’s Gazette, May 23, 1798. ¥ Ibid., May 24, 1798. 
8 Ibid., May 26, 1798. 


370 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


for the West Indies. ‘That these arms were bought for Virginia 
and Georgia is much more likely,’ commented “Porcupine.” ‘Take 
care, take care, you sleepy southern fools. Your negroes will 
probably be your masters this day twelve month.’! ‘Extra!’ 
‘Extra!’ ‘Startling News from Virginia’ — ‘these villains have 
actually begun to tamper with our negroes.’ An “ill-looking fellow 
on horseback’ had been seen talking with some slaves. It was 
understood he had come from Philadelphia, and the ruffian was a 
refugee from English justice in Ireland.2_ And then, another lurid 
article on ‘Horrors of a French Invasion,’ with bloodcurdling 
pictures of the outraging of American wives and daughters. 

The French invasion at hand —slaves armed — masters 
murdered in their beds — churches burned — women outraged — 
girls kidnaped — horrors piled on horrors, and all because of 
democracy. Little wonder that the apprehensive Adams, who 
temperamentally sniffed treachery in every breeze, all but 
trembled as he turned the pages of his ‘Porcupine’ that year. In 
Boston the presses were kept busy turning out Harper’s war 
speech,* and Cabot was spurring Harper on to greater efforts. 
There, too, the rabid war speech of a Harvard professor made on 
Fast Day in Brattle Street was being published as a pamphlet,® and 
the clergy were urging the hate of French democracy as a Christian 
duty, and converting their pulpits into pedestals of Mars. Dr. 
Tappan of Boston was making political harangues that Federalist 
politicians were praising,’ and Father Thayer was clamoring for 
slaughter in pious accents.” Sometimes Democratic members of 
congregations who sought Christ instead of Cesar in the temples 
indignantly left, and on one occasion an audacious and irreverent 
Jeffersonian paused on his way out to exclaim in Latin, ‘Why so 
much anger in the heart of a divine?’ § Nor were some of the war 
propagandists on the Bench to be outdone by those in the pulpit. 
Judge Rush was thundering vituperative phrases at the French in 
a charge to a jury.’ Chief Justice Dana of Massachusetts phrased 
one of his charges like a participant in a congressional party scrim- 


1 Porcupine’s Gazette, June 7, 1798. 2 Ibid., June 8, 1798. 
* Ibid., June 12, 1798. “ Lodge, Cabot (to Wolcott), 158-54. 
® Independent Chronicle, April 9, 1798. * Gibbs, n, 46, 


," Independent Chronicle, August 9, 1798. 
® Ibid., December 6, 1798, ® Centinel, September 29, 1798. 


HYSTERICS 371 


mage.! Much earlier, Chief Justice Ellsworth of the United States 
Supreme Court made a grand jury charge the occasion for an 
amazing attack on the Jeffersonian Party.? As early as May, 
Jefferson was utterly disheartened by the ‘war spirit worked up 
in the town.’ * By June he was writing Kosciusko that he thought 
war ‘almost inevitable.’ 4 In August he felt that ‘there is no event 
however atrocious which may not be expected,’ and was promising 
to meet the Maratists ‘in such a way as shall not be derogatory 
either to the public liberty or my own personal honor.’ 5 

The country was rushing toward the Terror, with the war party 
rattling sabers and threatening their opponents with violence. 
‘Porcupine’ was predicting gleefully that ‘when the occasion re- 
quires, the Yankees will show themselves as ready at stringing up 
insurgents as in stringing onions.’* It was an open season for 
physical assaults on Jeffersonian editors and Bache was being at- 
tacked in his office,’ and another assailant who had sought to 
murder him found his fifty-dollar fine paid by the politicians when 
he proffered the money, and Adams sent him on a mission to 
Europe.’ The Federalists, for the moment, were cocks of the walk, 
and even Hamilton was rushing into print with a letter that would 
have endeared him to the Three Musketeers. A nondescript had 
referred in the press to his ambition and his affair with Mrs. 
Reynolds. Ludicrously interpreting it as a threat of assassination 
because of a reference to Cesar, Hamilton lost his head and pub- 
lished a signed statement promising that the ‘assassin’ would 
‘not find me unprepared to repel attack.’ ® This childish boast 
played into the hands of the obscure assailant, who replied: 
‘Armed with a cane (whether with a sword therein I cannot say) 
you walk about, prepared, you say, to defy attack. By this you 
fall beneath resentment and excite my pity.’ 1° A few days later 
he was writing of ‘the declaration made in company’ by ‘a Mr. 
Patterson, a clerk to Alexander Hamilton,’ that the writer would 
be murdered, and offering five hundred dollars reward for the ap- 
prehension of the prospective assassin." Wild days, wild days! 


1 Centinel, December 15, 1798. 2 Porcupine’s Gazette, April 11, 1798. 
 Jefferson’s Works (to Madison), x, 83-36. 4 Ibid., x, 47-49. 
5 Ibid. (to Samuel Smith), x, 55. ® Porcupine’s Gazette, June 1, 1798. 


7? Gazette of the United States, August 9,1798. * Independent Chronicle, May 21, 1798, 
® Time Piece, May 25, 1798. 1° Tiid., May 28, 1798.  Jind., June 11, 1798. 


372 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


This was the temper in which Congress resumed its delibera- 
tions after the publication of the X Y Z papers. Jefferson advised 
his followers to seek an adjournment to permit the members to 
consult the people, and had this procedure been adopted the 
Federalists might have escaped the pitfalls to which they were 
reeling.1 The Democrats in the streets were cowed and only the 
most audacious met threats with bravado or courage. The braves 
of Tammany at a public dinner drank to the toast: ‘May the old 
Tories and all who wish to engage the United States in a war with 
any nation, realize the felicity they anticipate by being placed in 
the front of the first battle.’ ? The Boston ‘Chronicle’ was pub- 
lishing letters from ‘Benedict Arnold’ offering his services in the 
war for England, and rejoicing ‘to hear that so many of my 
countrymen have shaken off their delusion, as I predicted they 
would only eighteen years ago.’* Day after day it published 
Josiah Quincy’s speech, made in 1774, against standing armies. 
Soon it was calling attention to profiteering of war patriots in 
Boston who had a monopoly on Raven’s Duck which would be 
wanted for tents.* 


III 


But the Democratic leaders required all their courage to stand 
up before the fusillade — Jefferson most of all. With the Philadel- 
phia streets filled with swaggering young men in uniforms, many 
nights he heard ‘The Rogue’s March’ played beneath his windows. 
Bitter, threatening letters burdened his mail. Spies crept to his 
dinner table to pick up the stray threads of casual conversation 
that could be given a sinister twist, and he was forced to deny 
himself to all but his most intimate friends.’ When forced to ap- 
pear in company, he simulated an abstracted silence, ignored per-' 
sonal affronts, and talked calmly when at all. ‘All the passions 
are boiling over,’ he wrote in May, ‘and he who would keep him- 
self cool and clear of the contagion is so far below the point of 
ordinary conversation that he finds himself isolated in every 
society.’ ® Convinced that even his correspondence was tampered 


1 Jefferson’s Works (to Madison), x, 16-19. 
2 Time Piece, May 18, 1798. ? May 24, 1798. ¢ October 15, 1798. 
5 Jefferson’s Works (to Lewis), x, 36-37. © § Ibid. 


HYSTERICS 873 


with, he no longer dared write freely in letters entrusted to the 
mails.1 Spies dogged his footsteps and kept guard at his door.’ 
When on a visit to Virginia he accepted an entertainment on Sun- 
day, the floodgates were opened upon him, and his enemies boasted 
that ‘this fact has been trumpeted from one end of the country 
to the other as irrefutable proof of his contempt for the Christian 
religion, and his devotion to the new religion of France.’ * Sad 
that Rufus King and Christopher Gore had continued their Eng- 
lish tour on Sunday, and too bad that the Federalists persisted in 
holding their political caucuses in Boston on Sunday evenings, re- 
torted the ‘Independent Chronicle.’ 4 

No dinner of the war party was complete without an insulting 
toast on Jefferson. ‘Jefferson — May he deserve better of his 
country than he has hitherto done.’ § ‘The Vice-President — May 
his heart be purged of Gallicism in the pure fire of Federalism or 
be lost in the furnace’ — with groans. ‘John Adams — May he 
like Samson slay thousands of Frenchmen with the jaw bone of 
Jefferson.’ 7 And in the midst of the mobbing, the self-contained 
philosopher kept his mouth shut and his feet upon the ground. 
With ‘The Rogue’s March’ ringing in his ears he was able to write 
a long letter on the value of crop rotation; ® another on a plough 
he had invented; and in the midst of the Sedition Bill debate, 
learning that an acquaintance was going west of the Mississippi 
where wild horses roved the plains, he sent the suggestion that 
this was ‘the last opportunity to study them in a state of nature,’ 
and requesting him to prepare a report for the Philosophical 
Society.!° Many days found him alone in the library of this Society, 
and once, during that hectic summer, he stole away from the tur- 
moil and hate to the beautiful country home of the Logans where 
he could forget the bitterness of the battle browsing in its great 
library or lounging beneath its majestic trees." 

Everywhere the Democrats were fair game for persecution. 

1 Jefferson’s Works (to Madison), x, 22-24; (to John Taylor), x, 63-67. 

2 Ibid. (to S. Smith), x, 53-59. 

3 King’s Works (Troup to King), 1, 431-32. 

4 August 20, 1798. 

5 New York Commercial Advertiser, November 20, 1798. 

® Centinel, July 18, 1798. 7 [bid., July 14, 1798. 


8 Jefferson’s Works, x, 13-14. 9 Tind., 15-16. 10 Thid., 53-54, 
u Porcupine’s Gazette, July 21, 1798, makes a sneering comment, 


374 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Matthew Lyon found a band playing ‘The Rogue’s March’ in 
front of his tavern at Trenton and New Brunswick where crowds 
shouted imprecations.! In New York, only the appearance of 
fighting Irish friends prevented the war hawks from serenading 
Edward Livingston’s home with the offensive March.? In Boston 
the ‘patriots’ expelled Thomas Adams, editor of the ‘Chronicle,’ 
from the Fire Society of which he had been a faithful member for 
fourteen years. 


IV 


In this atmosphere, the Federalist machinery in Congress was 
set in motion at high speed on war measures. Provisions were 
made for the strengthening of the coast defenses, a navy was 
created, an army provided, taxes levied, and through all this the 
Jeffersonians, under the calm, courageous leadership of Albert 
Gallatin, merely sought to exercise a moderating influence. If war 
was to come, provision had to be made. But that was not enough 
for the radicals among the Federalists — the conditions were ripe 
for the crushing of domestic foes as well as foreign enemies. Here 
was the opportunity to destroy the party of democracy. 

The first manifestation of this intent came with the introduc- 
tion of the Alien Bill in the Senate — aimed at the Irish more than 
at the French, if we may judge from the correspondence of the 
Hamiltonian leaders and the tone of the Federalist press. Both 
fairly bristled with hatred of the Irish immigrant who was be- 
ginning to make himself felt in American politics. This, in part 
a by-product of the Federalist partiality for England, was, in 
large measure, an expression of the Federalist abhorrence of in- 
surrections against constituted authority everywhere. From the 
Ireland of that day, seething with rebellion, incoming vessels 
were bringing Irish refugees, most of whom were members of the 
revolutionary United Irishmen. Instinct and observation took 
them in a body into the Jeffersonian Party, of which they became 
the shock troops in many parts of the country. It was only at 
Jeffersonian dinners that glasses were drained to the Liberal 
leaders in England, Fox and Sheridan, and to the success of the 
Irish Rebellion; and only in Jeffersonian papers that sympathy 

1 Porcupine’s Gazette, July 23, 1798. 2 Time Piece, July 30, 1798. 


HYSTERICS 375 


was expressed. It was during this time that Irish patriots were 
being hurried to the gallows, and John Philpot Curran was making 
his incomparable orations, now classics, in their defense. His 
burning phrases were being punctuated by the rattle of the sol- 
diers’ musketry intended to awe him into silence. The patriot 
press was being crushed in Dublin. Castlereagh was busy with 
his dirty money buying members of the Irish Parliament where 
money would buy them, and finding renegades ready to cut their 
country’s throat for a title, a place, or a ribbon to pin on their 
coats. Of these latter the most loathsome was Lord Clare, whose 
infamy has been embalmed in the eloquence of Curran. 

It is not without significance that the Jeffersonian dinners in 
those days were toasting John Philpot Curran, and that his 
speeches were printed by the column in the Jeffersonian press,' 
while Cobbett was giving three full pages to Lord Clare’s excoria- 
tion of his countrymen.? A month before the Alien Bill reached 
the House, Cobbett was devoting a full page to a weird story in- 
volving the Irish in America in a conspiracy with the French for 
the destruction of the Government of the United States.? ‘That 
restless, rebellious tribe, the emigrated United Irishman,’ snorted 
‘Porcupine,’ the English citizen. 

All this was on the surface, but it did not reveal half the story, 
With the Irish patriots, crushed by the soldiers of Cornwallis, 
seeking an asylum in America, Rufus King, the Federalist Minister 
in London, was writing Hamilton rejoicing over the suppression of 
the Irish Rebellion, and expressing the hope that ‘our Govern- 
ment... will have the power and inclination to exclude these 
disaffected characters, who will be suffered to seek an asylum 
among us.’4 It was King’s aggressive protest to the British Gov- 
ernment that delayed for four years the release of the Irish prison- 
ers who had planned an extensive settlement in America. Ten 
years later, the most brilliant of these, Thomas Addis Emmet, 
who was to become one of the ornaments of the New York Bar 
and to sleep at length by the roaring traffic of Broadway in Saint 
Paul’s churchyard, wrote King in bitter rebuke: ‘I should have 


1 Time Piece, June 13, July 2, 11, 13, 1798; Aurora, November 7, 1798. 
2 Porcupine’s Gazette, December 22, 1798. 8 Ibid., May 8, 1798, 
4 King’s Works, u, 376. 


376 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


brought along with me a brother [Robert Emmet] whose name 
perhaps will you even not read without emotions of sympathy and 
respect.’! The Ministry had been favorable to the release and 
migration until King’s hot remonstrance against admitting such 
desperadoes as Thomas Addis Emmet! This Federalist hate of 
the Irish reeked in the sneers of its press, exposed itself in the 
‘wild Irish’ speech of Otis, in the official actions of King, in the 
correspondence of the leaders, in the description by Gibbs? of the 
victims of Cornwallis’s bayonets and Castlereagh’s bribes as 
‘fugitives from the justice of Great Britain.’ 

Many thought, when the Alien Bill was introduced, that it was 
aimed at Gallatin, and it was boasted in the coffee-houses of New 
York that it would soon be easy to ‘ship him off.’ ? Terrorized by 
the threat of the measure, many harmless Frenchmen, including 
Volney, hastily chartered a ship and sailed away,’ but when a little 
later some emigrant French royalists came knocking at the door 
they were admitted.> Jefferson thought the bill ‘detestable,’ ® and 
Madison, ‘a monster that will disgrace its parents.’” Even Hamil- 
ton was shocked at the bill introduced in the Senate, and he has- 
tened a letter to Pickering urging moderation. ‘Let us not be 
cruel or violent,’ he wrote.® 

The purpose of the Sedition Bill was to crush the opposition 
press and silence criticism of the ruling powers. Among the ex- 
treme and dominant Federalists criticism had long been confused 
with sedition, and Fenno had long described attacks on Ad- 
ministration measures as treason. Scurrility in the press was all 
too common, but the worst of the Jeffersonian organs could be 
matched by the Federalists; and no one in 1798 imagined that 
a Sedition Law would ever be evoked against ‘Porcupine’ or 
Russell. The Hamiltonians were moving with such celerity 
toward repression that a Congressman’s circularization of his 
constituents with comments on policies and measures was being 
denounced as seditious, and Judge Iredell, a narrow partisan, 
had actually called the attention of the Richmond Grand Jury to 
a letter from Representative Cabell. ‘Porcupine’ had published 


1 Randall, Jefferson, 400, note. 2 Volume u, 75, 77. 
3 Time Piece, June 1, 1798. 4 Jefferson’s Works (to Madison), x, 33-36; 40-43. 
5 Porcupine’s Gazette, July 11, 1798. 6 Jefferson’s Works (to Madison), x, 40. 


7 Madison’s Writings (to Jefferson), 11, 142. § Hamilton’s Works, x, 293, 


HYSTERICS 377 


this letter with abusive comments as though it were a treasonable 
correspondence with an alien enemy.! The next day he published 
with enthusiastic praise a letter that Otis the Federalist had 
written to a constituent in Boston.? 

The moment these measures were introduced, every one knew 
that Gallatin was in danger because of his Genevese accent, but 
that ‘Porcupine,’ the English subject, had no fears. Men like 
Hamilton Rowan, Dr. James Priestley, and Volney could be sent 
away, but the putrid offal of the defunct court of Versailles could 
continue to count upon a dinner at the Binghams’. Cabell was 
subject to indictment for an action that was commendable in 
Otis, and the merest child knew that the Sedition Law would be 
applied to Jeffersonian papers alone. 


Vv 


Bad as was the Alien Law, it did not approach the viciousness 
of the Sedition Act; and the Sedition Bill as passed was mild com- 
pared with the one the Federalist leaders in the Senate originally 
framed. Albeit America and France were not at war, the bill de- 
clared the French people enemies of the American people, and 
that any one giving the former aid and comfort should be punish- 
able with death. A strict enforcement of such an act would have 
sent Jefferson to the gallows. Under the Fourth Article any one 
questioning the constitutionality or justice of an Administration 
measure could be sent to herd with felons. It would have sealed 
the lips of members of Congress. 

When this monstrous measure reached Hamilton, he was dumb- 
founded at the temerity and brutality of his followers. Grasping 
his pen, he hurriedly sent a note of warning to Wolcott. There 
were provisions that were ‘highly exceptionable’ that would ‘en- 
danger civil war.’ He hoped that ‘the thing will not be hurried 
through.’ Why ‘establish a tyranny?’ Was not ‘energy a very 
different thing from violence??? Reeling drunk with intolerance, 
even Hamilton’s warning only coaxed a slight concession to liberty, 
and it was a thoroughly vicious and tyrannical measure that was 
debated in the House. These debates were conducted under con- 


1 Porcupine’s Gazette, April 30, 1798. 2 Tbid., May 1, 1798. 
* Hamilton’s Works, x, 295, 


378 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


ditions of disorder that would have disgraced a discussion of 
brigands wrangling over a division of spoils in a wayside cave. 
Gallatin, Livingston, and Nicholas were forced to talk against 
coughs, laughter, conversation, and the scraping of the feet of the 
apostles of ‘law and order.’ No personal insult too foul, no nin- 
compoop too insignificant to sneer in the face of Gallatin. De- 
spite these terrorizing tactics, the Jeffersonians stood firm and 
made their record. Even the customary courtesy of Gallatin de- 
serted him, however, and when the sneering Harper darkly hinted 
at traitors in the House, he retorted sharply that he knew ‘no- 
thing in the character of [Harper], either public or private, to en- 
title him to the ground he so boldly assumes.’ 

On the last day of the debate on the Alien Bill, Edward Living- 
ston closed for the opposition; and in discussing the constitutional 
phase, he anticipated the doctrine of the Kentucky and Virginia 
Resolutions, indicating probable conferences with the tall, silent 
man who was presiding over the Senate. “If we are ready to vio- 
late the Constitution,’ he said, ‘will the people submit to our un- 
authorized acts? Sir, they ought not to submit; they would 
deserve the chains that these measures are forging for them.’ 
The effect of such a measure? ‘The country will swarm with in- 
formers, spies, delators, and all the odious reptile tribe that breed 
in the sunshine of despotic power. ... The hours of the most un- 
suspected confidence, the intimacies of friendship, or the recesses 
of domestic retirement, afford no security. The companion whom 
you must trust, the friend in whom you must confide, the do- 
mestic who waits in your chamber, are all tempted to betray your 
imprudent or unguarded follies; to misrepresent your words; to 
convey them, distorted by calumny, to the secret tribunal where 
jealousy presides — where fear officiates as accuser, and suspicion 
is the only evidence that is heard. . . . Do not let us be told that we 
are to excite a fervor against a foreign aggression to establish a 
tyranny at home; that like the arch traitor we cry “‘Hail Colum- 
bia’? ! at the moment we are betraying her to destruction; that we 
sing, “‘Happy Land,” when we are plunging it in ruin and dis- 
grace; and that we are absurd enough to call ourselves free and en- 
lightened while we advocate principles that would have disgraced 
the age of Gothic barbarity.’ ? 

1 A reference to Hopkinson’s song. 2 Annals, June 21, 1798. 


HYSTERICS 879 


The vote was taken and the Alien Bill passed, 46 to 40. 

Livingston was to hear a few days later when the debate on the 
Sedition Bill was reached that he had been guilty of sedition in his 
speech on the Alien Bill. Not least among the grotesque features 
of the crazy times was the prominence, amounting to leadership, 
attained by John Allen of Connecticut —a tall, hectic, sour- 
visaged fanatic. It was reserved for him to indict the Jeffersonians 
generally for sedition. Had not Livingston been guilty of sedition 
when he proposed that Gerry be authorized to renew negotiations? 
Was not the ‘Aurora’s’ explanation of the effect of the Alien Law 
upon the Irish treason? Were not members of Congress who dared 
write their views to their constituents traitors? From a want-wit. 
like this fanatic such views were more ludicrous than depressing,, 
but Harper rose to give his full assent to the buffoonery of Allen.. 
‘What!’ exclaimed Nicholas, ‘is it proposed to prevent members. 
from speaking what they please or prohibit them from reaching 
the people with their views?’ And Harper, disclaiming any desire 
to curtail the freedom of speech upon the floor, bravely admitted 
a desire to prevent the speeches from reaching the people ‘out of 
doors.’ This astounding doctrine brought Gallatin to his feet with 
a scornful denunciation of Allen’s criticism of Cabell’s letter. It 
‘contained more information and more sense than the gentleman. 
from Connecticut has displayed or can display.’ Taking up every 
assertion in Cabell’s letter and making it his own, he challenged a 
denial of its truth. Then, referring to the attack on Livingston’s. 
speech, Gallatin gave his full sanction to the New York states- 
man’s doctrine of resistance to unconstitutional measures. ‘I 
believe that doctrine is absolutely correct and neither seditious nor 
treasonable.’ 

On the last day Livingston spoke with his usual spirit and elo-. 
quence, and Harper closed for the bill with an anti-climactic 
charge, apropos of nothing, that the Jeffersonian plan of govern- 
ment was in the interest of ‘men of immoderate ambition, great 
family connections, hereditary wealth, and extensive. influence’ 
like Livingston. ‘Great patrician families’ would walk over the 
heads ‘of we plebeian people.’ This touching appeal for the 
plebeians could hardly have been meant for Philadelphia where at 
that time ‘the great patricians’ were lavishly wining and dining 


380 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


the Harpers, and rigidly excluding the Livingstons and Gallatins 
from their tables. Thus the Federalists closed their case and 
the bill passed, 44 to 41. 

The press was peculiarly silent through the debates. Russell in 
the Boston ‘Centinel’ observed that ‘Benedict Arnold complained 
bitterly of the treason bill,’ ? and his rival, Thomas Adams of the 
‘Chronicle,’ announced the passage with the comment that ‘we 
are now abridged the freedom of the press.’ * Soon the ‘Commer- 
cial Advertiser’ of New York would be dubbing all men traitors 
who criticized the Sedition Law, and Jefferson would be inviting 
Hamilton Rowan to the sanctuary of Monticello with the assur- 
ance that the Habeas Corpus Act was still operative in Virginia.‘ 
Almost immediately the Reign of Terror broke upon the land. 


VI 


In the midst of political terrors the yellow fever stalked again 
into the haunts of men, striking in New York, in Boston, with 
special virulence in Philadelphia. By the first of October, fourteen 
hundred had died in New York City. Hamilton remained in town 
until persuaded by his family to go to the country, but he con- 
tinued to visit the city daily to confer with his political friends.5 
In Philadelphia those who could afford it took to flight. Soon 
thousands were encamped in tents on the common on the out- 
skirts and by October not more than seven thousand people re- 
mained in the stricken city. An English traveler, entering in 
September, found the theaters, taverns, drinking-houses, gamb- 
ling-dens, and dance-halls closed, hospital carts moving slowly 
through abandoned streets, the casket-makers alone busy. Sitting 
one night on the steps of a house in Arch Street, where most 
houses were deserted, he could hear nothing but the groans of the 
dying, the lamentations of the living, the hammers of the coffin- 
makers, the dismal howling of deserted dogs.* Even the physicians 
took to their heels, but Dr. Rush, the head of his profession, re- 
mained to battle with the disease.’ The health office was kept 
open day and night.® 


1 Annals, July 10, 1798. , § July 28, 1798. § July 19, 1798. 
4 Jefferson’s Works, x, 59-61. 5 King’s Works (Troup to King), mu, 431-32, 
6 Davis, 46-48. 7 King’s Works (Troup to King), u, 431-32. 


® Gazette of the United States, September 1, 1798. 


HYSTERICS 381 


But even in the midst of death the politicians fought with 
scarcely diminished ferocity. ‘Porcupine’ and Fenno were stoop- 
ing to the ghastly business of maligning the methods of Dr. Rush 
in treating the disease. Standing heroically to his duty where 
others had fled, he was forced, day by day, to read the most scur- 
rilous attacks upon him. The animus was due to the fact that 
Rush was a Jeffersonian; and even from Lisbon, William Smith 
contributed his slur in a letter to Wolcott manifesting sympathy 
with the attacks because he had ‘always considered the Doctor a 
wrong-headed politician.’ ! Bache and Fenno clawed on, amidst 
the dying and the dead, until one September day the fever entered 
the Fenno house and struck down both the editor and his wife. 
When she died, the ‘Gazette’ was suspended, and the next day 
John Fenno ceased his attacks on Dr. Rush, for Death had inter- 
vened.? ‘Alas poor John Fenno,’ wrote Ames, ‘a worthy man, a 
true Federalist, always firm in his principles, mild in maintaining 
them, and bitter against foes. No printer was ever so correct in 
his politics.’ * A few days later, Benjamin Franklin Bache of the 
‘Aurora’ fought no more. The Boston ‘Chronicle’ announced his 
death in a black-bordered editorial lamenting ‘the loss of a man 
of inflexible virtue, unappalled by power or persecution, and who, 
in dying, knew no anxieties but what was excited by his appre- 
hensions for his country and for his young family.’ * The Jeffer- 
sonian press published long articles and poems of tribute. In New 
York the Democrats lost the services of Greenleaf of the ‘Argus,’ 
another victim of the plague. 

John Ward Fenno took up the work of his father, and the 
widows of Bache and Greenleaf sought to continue the ‘Aurora’ 
and the ‘Argus,’ the former calling to her assistance one of the 
ablest controversial journalists of his time, William Duane. No 
Jeffersonian papers made an unfeeling reference to the death of 
Fenno; the passing of Bache was gloated over in ghoulish fashion — 
by the Federalist press, and soon ‘Porcupine’ and young Fenno 
were making merry over ‘the widows Bache and Greenleaf.’ It 
was part of the Reign of Terror — and the fight went on. 


1 Gibbs, m1, 55. | ® Gazette of the United States, September 6, 1798, 
8 Ames (to Dwight), 1, 240. 4 September 17, 1798. 


382 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


VII 


It went on because there was a congressional election pending 
and both parties were putting forth their utmost effort. The 
Federalists were hoping that under the influence of war hysteria 
the Jeffersonians could be annihilated; the Jeffersonians were 
fighting desperately to hold the line. The most sensational feature 
of the campaign was the emergence as an avowed party man of 
Washington, whose aristocratic viewpoint made democracy of- 
fensive. He went the full length, finding nothing objectionable in 
the Alien and Sedition Laws. When, on his persuasion, Patrick 
Henry entered the campaign as a candidate for the Assembly, he 
too defended these wretched measures with the silly and insincere 
statement that they were ‘too deep’ for him and were the emana- 
tions of a ‘wise body.’ } 

But more important than the emergence of Washington was the 
congressional candidacy of John Marshall, who entered the fight 
on Washington’s insistence. The Hamiltonian Federalists were 
delighted with his candidacy until the publication of his letter 
opposing the Alien and Sedition Laws, when they turned upon 
him with bitter scorn. ‘His character is done for,’ wrote Ames.? 
Noah Webster commented that ‘he speaks the language of true 
Americanism except on the Alien and Sedition Laws.’ ? ‘Porcu- 
pine’ added an editor’s note to the letter in his paper: ‘The pub- 
lication of these questions and answers will do neither good nor 
harm. I insert them as a sort of record of Mr. Marshall’s character. 
If I were a voter, however, I would sooner vote for Gallatin than 
for Marshall.’ * The New England Federalists were wrathy among 
themselves over Marshall’s apostasy. ‘Mr. Marshall,’ wrote 
Cabot to Pickering, ‘has given us great uneasiness here by his an- 
swers... Mr. Marshall, I know, has much to learn on the subject 
of a practical system of free government for the United States... 
I believe, however, that he will eventually prove a great acquisi- 
tion.’ > It was at this juncture that Cabot proved his superior 
political perspicacity by taking up his pen in defense of Marshall 


1 Henry, Henry, u, 612 # Ames (to Gore), 1, 246. 
® Commercial Advertiser, October 17, 1798. . 
“ Porcupine’s Gazette, November 30, 1798. 5 Lodge, Cabot, 179-81. 


HYSTERICS 383 


for the Boston ‘Centinel.’! The struggle in Virginia was bitter. 
The Jeffersonians, long prepared for Washington’s action, were 
undismayed, and they fought with increased vim. The result was 
that, while Marshall won by 108 majority, the Jeffersonians 
elected all but eight of the Representatives, carried the Legisla- 
ture, and elected a United States Senator. 

The Federalists were chagrined with the general result. Cabot 
was disappointed with Massachusetts ? and Maryland.’ A Sena- 
tor had been lost in North Carolina, and from South Carolina the 
Jeffersonians had sent to the Senate their most resourceful leader, 
Charles Pinckney. Theodore Sedgwick, surveying the field, and 
writing his observations to King in London, could find no improve- 
ment in the Senate and but a slight ‘amelioration’ in the House. 
The Jeffersonians had won six out of ten seats in New York, 
gained two in New Jersey, and eight out of thirteen in Pennsyl- 
vania. 

But Giles was gone — retiring in disgust to the Legislature of 
Virginia. The election was over — and the Reign of Terror was 
beginning. 


VIII 


It began in the summer of 1798 and extended through the 
autumn of 1800. The growing sentiment for democracy and the 
increasing popularity of Jefferson were maddening to the Federal- 
ists, who fared forth to destroy both with a club. The Alien and 
Sedition Laws were to be used for the purpose. Democrats, from 
the highest to the most lowly, were to be proscribed and treated 
with contempt. The New England clergy, for the most part, 
entered heartily into the plan. The colleges joined. So openly 
partisan became the institutions of learning that the Jeffersonian 
press opened their batteries upon the ‘arbitrary spirit which has 
been exposed in the eastern seminaries.’ 4 With much ceremony 
Doctors’ Degrees were being bestowed upon Federalist politicians, 
and Pickering and Wolcott were made Doctors of Law. ‘Except 
Timothy’s vulgar diplomacy who ever heard of the qualifications 
in him?’ asked the irreverent Duane, and while ‘Oliver has dab- 


1 Lodge, Cabot, 147. 2 Ibid, (to Pickering), 179. 3 Ibid., 172. 
{ Aurora, February 12, 1800. 


S84 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


bled in politics and glittered in prose’ ‘he would never have been 
discovered by the savants had he not been in the Cabinet of a New 
England President.’ 1 Other Federalist politicians were thus given 
the disguise of scholarship, but Jefferson, President of the Philo- 
sophical Society, and friend of Franklin and Rittenhouse, received 
no degrees. 

Very early, gangs of self-proclaimed patriots sallied forth into 
the country to tear down the liberty poles erected by the Demo- 
crats, armed with pistols and swords, and clattering over the 
country roads like Cossacks on a rampage. One of these gangs 
under the leadership of a Philip Strubling, operating in Berks 
County, Pennsylvania, had a triumphant career, except where 
armed men showed fight, when the gallant band found discretion 
the better part of valor.2 This sort of outrage was being com- 
mitted all over the country. Plans were made to wreck the print- 
ing plant of Duane until it was found that his friends had armed 
for defense, and the editor warned the conspirators that an at- 
tempt at violence ‘would carry public vengeance to their fire- 
sides.’ 3 

When thwarted in their plans against the leaders, the terrorists 
turned upon the weak and lowly, demanding the discharge of 
Jeffersonian artisans employed in the manufacture of war ma- 
terial. Out with them! ‘It is a notorious fact,’ complained Fenno, 
‘that a number of artisans... are of politics destructive of the 
Constitution.’ * Everywhere, in the pulpits of political preachers, 
from the Bench of Federal Judges, through the press and on the 
streets, men were beating upon the tom-toms arousing the appre- 
hensions of the people; and when, one night, some pirates, sen- 
tenced to execution, escaped from the Philadelphia jail, the clatter 
of the mounted soldiers in pursuit was enough to fill the streets 
with affrighted people. The Germans of Northampton were 
marching on the city with pitchforks. The soldiers were out after 
Duane, whispered others, and armed Democrats rushed to the 
rescue. At length the fever subsided and order was restored. ‘No- 
thing more serious than the disturbance of love-making,’ said the 


1 Aurora, February 22, 1800. 

2 In Porcupine’s Gazette, February 2, 1799, Strubling eye to explain his failure to 
fight when resistance was offered. 

® Aurora, May 20, 1799. 4 Gazette of the United Suites, April 15, 1799, 


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HYSTERICS | 885 


‘Aurora.’ ! These were minor incidents — the background for the 
real terror to come. Judges were terrorizing the people with wild 
charges to grand juries.” The Right Reverend Bishop White of 
Philadelphia was preaching piously and patriotically from the 
text: ‘Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. For there 
is no purpose but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God. 
Whoso therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of 
God. And they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.’ 3 
The Administration organ in New York was laying down the dic- 
tum: ‘When a man is heard to inveigh against the Sedition Law, 
set him down as one who would submit to no restraint which is 
calculated for the peace of society. He deserves to be suspected.’ 4 
And Timothy Pickering was nervously peering through his spec- 
tacles over Jeffersonian papers seeking some phrase on which a 
prosecution for sedition could be brought, and prodding the dis- 
trict attorneys to action. ‘Heads, more heads!’ screamed Marat 
from his tub. ‘Heads, more heads!’ echoed Pickering from his 
office. 

1 April 29, 1800. 

2 Judge Alexander Addison, Gazette of the United States, February 15, 1799; Judge Iredell, 
April 9, 1799. 


3 Gazette of the United States, May 10, 1799. 
¢ New York Commercial Advertiser, December 29, 1798. 


CHAPTER XVII 
THE REIGN OF TERROR 


I 


T is not surprising that the first notable victim of the Terror 
was Matthew Lyon whom we have seen insulted at various 
points when homeward bound from Philadelphia. Bitter though 
he was, he had sound sense and realized his danger. When the 
Rutland ‘Herald’ refused to publish his address to his constitu- 
ents, he launched his own paper, ‘The Scourge of Aristocracy,’ with 
a defiant challenge: ‘ When every aristocratic hireling from the 
English Porcupine ...to the dirty hedge-hogs and groveling ani- 
mals of his race in this and neighboring States are vomiting 
forth columns of lies, malicious abuse and deception, the Scourge 
wil be devoted to politics.” How Pickering must have stared 
through his spectacles at that defiance! But patience! If speeches 
and papers offered no case, there still were letters, and one was 
found. Here surely was ‘sedition.’ Had Lyon not referred to 
Adams’s ‘continual grasp for power,’ to his ‘unbounded thirst for 
ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice’? Had he 
not charged that the President had turned men out of office for 
party reasons, and that ‘the sacred name of religion’ was ‘em- 
ployed as a state engine to make mankind hate and persecute one 
another’? Had he not printed a letter from Barlow, the poet, re- 
ferring to ‘the bullying speech of your President and the stupid 
answer of your Senate’? It was enough. True, the letter had been 
published before the Sedition Law was passed, but this was the 
Reign of Terror. The trial before Judge Peters was a farce, and 
the culprit was found guilty. ‘Matthew Lyon,’ said Peters in 
fixing the sentence, ‘as a member of the Federal Legislature you 
must be well acquainted with the mischiefs which flow from the 
unlicensed abuse of Government’ — and Lyon was sentenced to 
four months in jail and to pay a fine of a thousand dollars. 
Then the Terror began to work in earnest. There was a fairly 
respectable jail at Rutland where the trial was held, but not for 


THE REIGN OF TERROR 387 


Lyon. There was something worse at Vergennes, forty miles away, 
a loathsome pen in a miserable little town of sixty houses, and 
thither he was ordered. Refusing his request to return to his 
house for some papers, he was ordered to mount a horse, and with 
two troopers with pistols, riding behind, the forty-mile journey 
through the wilderness was made. At Vergennes they pushed him 
into a cell, sixteen by twelve, ordinarily used for common felons of 
the lowest order. In one corner was a toilet emitting a sickening 
stench. A half-moon door opened on the corridor, through which 
his coarse food was passed. Through a window with heavy iron 
bars he got some light. There was no stove and the cold of 
autumn nights came in through the window. When it became 
dangerously chilly, the prisoner put on his overcoat and paced the 
cell. He was refused pen and paper until the indignation of the 
public forced a concession. A visitor peering through the half- 
moon of the door a little later would have seen a table strewn with 
paper, Volney’s ‘Ruins,’ some Messages of the President. 

Meanwhile the Vermont hills were aflame with fury. The Green 
Mountain Boys, the Minute Men, the soldiers who, with Lyon, 
had followed Ethan Allen, were talking of tearing the jail down. 
Then, from the filthy, foul-smelling hole, into which the Federal- 
ists had thrown a member of Congress, came letters from the 
‘convict,’ brave, cheerful letters, exhorting these men to observe 
the law. One day, however, Lyon was forced to plead through the 
iron bars of his window for the furious mob without to seek redress 
legally at the polls. Thus popular resentment increased with the 
growth of the prisoner’s popularity. Thousands of the yeomanry 
of Vermont signed a petition for a pardon and sent it to Adams, 
who refused to receive it. Aha, ‘the despicable, cringing, fawning 
puppy!’ exulted Fenno.! The indignation of the yeomanry of 
Vermont now blazed high. The Administration was amazed, al- 
most appalled. When this ‘convict’ in a hideous cell was nomi 
nated for Congress, there were not jails enough in Vermont for 
the talkers of ‘sedition.’ He was elected overwhelmingly with 
4576 votes to 2444 for his nearest competitor. 

Again the terrorists consulted on plans to thwart the public will. 
His term was about to expire, but where would this pauper get a 


1 Gazette of the United States, January 2, 1799. 


388 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


thousand dollars? True, the farmers, the comrades of the Revolu- 
tion, were going into their pockets to get the money — but a 
thousand dollars! Still there was a chance. The Marshal sum- 
moned Federalist lawyers to go over Lyon’s letters and find more 
sedition on which he could be arrested on emerging from the jail. 
His triumphant election was more than the terrorists could bear. 
‘Must our national councils be again disgraced by that vile beast?’ 
asked their New York organ.!. Meanwhile, the problem of the 
fine was being solved. The eyes of the Nation were on that dirty 
little cell at Vergennes. Jefferson, Madison, Gallatin, John Taylor 
of Caroline, Senator Mason of Virginia — he who had given the Jay 
Treaty to the ‘Aurora’ — and Apollis Austen, a wealthy Vermont 
Democrat, were solving the problem of the fine. On the day of 
Lyon’s delivery, the Virginia Senator rode into the village, his 
saddle-bags bulging with a thousand and more in gold. There he 
met Austen with a strong-box containing more than a thousand 
in silver. Mason paid the money. 

Before the jail had assembled a vast multitude. Out of the door 
rushed Lyon. ‘I am on my way to Philadelphia!’ — to Congress, 
he shouted. A roar went up, a procession with a flag in front was 
formed, and the ‘convict’ was on his way triumphantly. The 
school children at Tinmouth paraded in his honor, and a youthful 
orator greeted him with a welcome to ‘our brave Representative 
who has been suffering for us under an unjust sentence, and the 
tyranny of a detested understrapper of despotism.’ The woods 
reverberated with shouts. Then on moved the procession. At 
Bennington, another ovation, more speeches. Seated in a sleigh, 
his wife beside him, Lyon was escorted by the throng. At times 
the procession was twelve miles long. Through New York, New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania, the ovations were repeated. He had gone 
home to the tune of ‘The Rogue’s March’; he returned by the 
same route to the tune of ‘Yankee Doodle.’ ? 


II 


The terrorists ground their teeth and sought revenge — with 
nothing too petty. The Reverend John C. Ogden dared to be a 


1 Commercial Advertiser, December 28, 1799. 
2 McLaughlin, Lyon; Wharton, State Trials, 333-44, 


THE REIGN OF TERROR 389 


Democrat and to carry the petition for Lyon to Philadelphia. 
Thenceforth he was a marked man. He was in debt — and a debt 
would serve. Returning from Philadelphia, he was arrested at 
Litchfield, Connecticut, and thrown into jail. ‘It is presumed,’ 
sneered Major Russell of the Boston ‘Centinel,’ ‘that Lyon when 
he goes from his jail to Congress will at least sneak into Litchfield 
to pay a visit to his envoy and take a petition from him to the 
Vice-President [Jefferson].’! But jail was too good for such a 
rascal. On his release a crowd of soldiers followed him out of Litch- 
field, calling him ‘a damn Democrat,’ abusing, insulting, collaring, 
shaking him. It was their purpose to take him back to Litchfield 
and scourge him in public. Whirling him around, the gallant 
soldiers started back. Meanwhile, the report had spread that the 
heroic remnant of the army had set forth on a mobbing expedition, 
and a party of Democrats and civilians mounted horses and rushed 
to the rescue. The courage of the soldiers, so splendid in the 
presence of one man, oozed out on the approach of the rescuers, 
‘and Ogden was released.? 


IIt 


But Ogden was not the only victim of the terrorists, among the 
friends of Lyon. Anthony Haswell, born in England, a man of 
education, who had seen service in the army of Washington and 
had narrowly escaped death at Monmouth, was editor of the 
‘Vermont Gazette.’ A gentleman of amiability and integrity, his 
popularity was great in Vermont — but he was a Jeffersonian. 
One day the sleuths of the Terror, scanning the pages of Demo- 
cratic papers, found an appeal in Haswell’s ‘Gazette’ for funds to 
pay the fine of Lyon. It referred to the ‘loathsome prison,’ to the 
marshal as ‘a hard-hearted savage, who has, to the disgrace of 
Federalism, been elevated to a station where he can satiate his 
barbarity on the misery of his victims.’ It was a faithful portrait. 
But in concluding, the article charged that the Administration had 
declared worthy of the confidence of the Government the Tories 
‘who had shared in the desolation of our homes and the abuse of 
our wives and daughters.’ 

Thus, one night there was a hammering on the door of Haswell’s 

1 Centinel, February 27, 1799. 2 Aurora, June 20, 1799. 


390 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON | 


house, and he was confronted by petty officials and notified to pre- 
pare for a journey to Rutland in the early morning. In feeble 
health, and unaccustomed to riding, he was forced to mount a 
horse for the sixty-mile ride to the capital. Through a cold October 
rain the sick man jolted along in misery through the day, and it 
was near midnight when the town was reached. With his clothing 
soaked, he begged permission to spend the night at a hotel where 
he could dry it. This was curtly refused. At midnight they pushed 
the sick man in wet clothing into a cell. Responsible men of Rut- 
land begged permission to go security to the end that the editor 
might spend the night in decent quarters — it was denied. The 
next morning he was hurried to trial at Windsor before Judge 
Paterson who, on the Bench, continued to be a New Jersey politi- 
cian. The defense introduced evidence to prove the charge of 
brutality against the marshal, and asked the Court for permission 
to summon McHenry and General Drake of Virginia to prove that 
on one occasion the Administration had acknowledged the policy 
of occasionally appointing Tories to office. The Court refused per- 
mission; and having refused, Paterson declared in the charge that 
‘no attempt had been made at justification’ of the reference to 
Tories. The jury was probably packed. The verdict was promptly 
rendered — guilty of sedition. And Haswell was sent to jail for 
two months. On the day of the expiration of his sentence, a great 
throng assembled at the prison to testify to their regard for Has- 
well and their contempt for the Sedition Law and its sponsors. 
When the editor appeared at the door, the band played while the 
crowd sang: | 


“Yankee Doodle, keep it up, 
Yankee Doodle dandy.’ 


It was all too evident that, despite the Sedition Law, there were 
“Yankee Doodles’ to ‘keep it up’ too numerous for the jails. 


IV 


The enforcement of the law in Massachusetts offered comedy, 
tragedy, and farce — with at least one hero among the victims. 
There was something of pathos even in the farce. An illiterate and 
irresponsible soldier of the Revolution, David Brown, was wander- 


THE REIGN OF TERROR 391 


ing about the country reading and distributing some foolish com- 
positions of his own that were incomprehensible in their incoher- 
ency. It was possible to detect some dissatisfaction with the Ad- 
ministration, however. His was the grievance of many others of 
the ragged Continentals of the ranks. He was a Democrat. Fisher 
Ames, who was not a soldier, though old enough to have been one, 
was outraged and alarmed over the foolish fellow’s activities, and 
pretended to believe that he was one of the Jeffersonian ‘runners 
sent everywhere to blow the trumpet of sedition.’? He wrote Gore, 
who had grown rich buying up the paper of the private soldiers, of 
this ‘vagabond ragged fellow, who lurked about in Dedham tell- 
ing everybody the sins and enormities of the government.’ Ames 
understood that he ‘knew of my speculating connection with you; } 
and how I had made my immense wealth.’ ? Finally he partic- 
ipated in the erection of a liberty pole at Dedham bearing among 
its inscriptions the sinister words, ‘No Stamp Tax, No Sedition.’ 
The authorities pounced upon him as legitimate prey. 

The next scene was laid in the courtroom in Boston. On the 
Bench sat the fat, red-faced Chase, like an avenging angel who 
looked too often on the wine when it was red. It was solemnly 
proved that Brown had writings of his own hostile to the Ad- 
ministration policies; that he had paid to have the inscription 
painted for the pole at Dedham; and that in the presence of forty 
or fifty dangerous farmers he had been seen holding the ladder 
while another ascended to nail the board on. There was no de- 
fense. Chase glowered on the miserable illiterate, and, reminding 
him that he was at the mercy of the Court, demanded the names 
of the miscreants who had subscribed to his writings. Brown re- 
fused to betray the imaginary men higher up, and Chase fined him 
four hundred dollars and sent him to jail for a year and a half, 
Working entirely on his own initiative, the unhappy wretch was 
buried in a cell and all but forgotten. The Federalist papers re- 
corded his conviction with gusto, albeit with sorrow that such 
things could be. After sixteen months, he sent a pitiful petition to 
Adams asking for a pardon, but it was refused. In February, 1801, 
he sent a second petition, which was ignored. After spending two 


1 This connection was real. 
2 Ames, I, 247. 


392 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


years in a cell, he was pardoned by Jefferson.! This trial was a 
farce. 


Vv 


Followed then the comedy. ’ Among the desperate characters 
who had assisted in the pole-raising at Dedham was Richard Fair- 
banks. A thoroughly decent citizen, he was arrested and dragged 
tremblingly into court. Most of the victims of the Sedition Law 
were unrepentant and defiant, but Fairbanks was full of remorse. 
There may have been a bit of cunning in his confession of past 
wickedness and his profession of conversion. At any rate, the scene 
in court was not sothreatening. True, thestern-faced Chase looked 
down from the Bench, but there in the room, ready to plead for 
mercy, was Fisher Ames. The charge was read, confessed, and up 
rose Ames. Not, however, as a paid attorney did he appear, but 
there was something to be said in extenuation for Fairbanks. He 
realized ‘how heinous an offense it was.’ He had promised to bea 
good citizen in the future. ‘His character has not been blemished 
in private life,’ the orator said, ‘and I do not know that he is less 
aman of integrity and benevolence than others. He is aman of 
rather warm and irritable temperament, too credulous, too sudden 
in his impressions.’ He had been seduced by the ‘inflammatory 
sophistry’ of the illiterate Brown. ‘Besides,’ continued Ames, in 
his most virtuous tones, ‘men in office have not been wanting to 
second Brown and to aggravate the bad opinion of the govern- 
ment and the laws....The men who had Mr. Fairbanks’ con- 
fidence and abused it are more blameable than he. A newspaper 
has also chiefly circulated there which has a pestilent influence.’ 
Thus he had bad advice. ‘Although Mr. Fairbanks was in- 
fluenced like the rest and was criminal in the affair of the sedition 
pole he had no concern in the contrivance. He... has freely con- 
fessed his fault and promised to be in future a good citizen.’ Havy- 
ing attacked the Jeffersonians in Congress and out, and denounced 
‘The Aurora’ or ‘Independent Chronicle,’ and implied that Fair- 
banks would vote and talk right in the future, Ames sat down; and 


1 Independent Chronicle, June 17, 1799; Gazette of the United States, June 17, 1799; ‘En- 
forcement of the Alien and Sedition Laws,’ by Anderson, American Historical Association 
Report, 1912, 


THE REIGN OF TERROR 393 


just as solemnly Chase, commenting that ‘one object of punish- 
ment, reformation, has been accomplished,’ fined him five dollars 
and sent him to jail for six hours. Whereupon we may imagine 
Chase and Ames felicitating themselves on having scared the 
Democratic and Jeffersonian devils out of one sinner. 

This was comedy. 


VI 


The tragedy in Massachusetts was reserved for a more im- 
portant person —the editor of the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ 
Thomas Adams, who was printing one of the most powerful 
Jeffersonian papers in the country. He had published an attack 
on the denunciation of the Virginia Resolutions by the Massa- 
chusetts Legislature.1 The Essex Junto had been seeking a chance 
at the throat of the editor. His paper had been keenly searched 
for some excuse for action under the Sedition Law. In the autumn 
of 1798 he had been arrested and the effect had been provoking. 
In announcing his arrest, Adams had promised his readers a full 
report of the trial, and pledged himself to ‘always support the 
rights of the people and the liberty of the press, agreeable to the 
sacred charter of the Constitution.’ ? When, four days later, he 
reported the postponement of his trial, he was able to ‘thank our 
new subscribers whose patriotism has led them to support the 
freedom of the press since the late persecution.’ ? 

The political persecution of Adams had in no wise intimidated 
him. Every issue of his paper was a clarion call to the faithful. If 
anything, he raised his banner a little higher. The public, looking 
upon his arrest as tyrannical and outrageous, rallied around him 
as never before. Eleven days after his arrest, he reported an ‘un- 
precedented increase in circulation,’ and pledged himself to carry 
on the fight. Not without point did he quote, ‘A free press will 
maintain the majesty of the people,’ for, as he explained, ‘this was 
originally written by John Adams, President of the United States, 
for Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette when British Excises, Stamp 
Acts, Land Taxes, and Arbitrary Power threatened this country 
with poverty and destruction.’ * Courageous though he was, the 


' Independent Chronicle, February 18, 1799. 2 Ibid., October 25, 1798. 
* Ibid., October 29, 1798. 4 Iind., November 5, 1798. 


394 ' JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


persecution drained the editor’s weakened vitality, and he was con- 
fined to his bed in a country house near Boston when the attack 
on the Massachusetts Legislature was published. Though too ill 
to be dragged into court, he was not too ill to announce the second 
phase of the persecution in the language of defiance. Double- 
spacing the announcement to make it stand out like a challenge, 
he said: ‘The Chronicle is destined to persecution. ...It will 
stand or fall with the liberties of America, and nothing shall 
silence its clarion but the extinction of every principle which leads 
to the achievement of our independence.’! Because the editor 
could not be dragged from a sick bed, Abijah Adams, the book- 
keeper, was arrested on the ground that he had sold the papers 
and therefore published the ‘libel.’ 

Chief Justice Dana presided at the trial — as intolerant, po- 
litically, but not as stupid and coarse as Chase. The prosecution 
based its action on the common law of England, which the defense 
declared inconsistent with the Constitution of Massachusetts, and 
hostile to the spirit of the American Government. Dana rose to 
the occasion, not only attacking Adams’s lawyers from the Bench, 
but assailing them through the press.? The result was inevitable. 
A verdict of guilt was promptly reached, and Dana made the most 
of his opportunity in sentencing the criminal. The defendant’s 
lawyers were denounced for ‘propagating principles’ as ‘dangerous 
as those of the article on which the indictment was based.’ Since 
the editor would not give up the name of the author of the offen- 
sive article, Adams would have to suffer, and he was sentenced to 
jail for thirty days, ordered to pay costs, and to give bond for good 
behavior for a year. So shocking was the spirit of Dana in passing 
sentence that he was challenged in the ‘Chronicle’ to publish his 
speech.*? Adams editorially denounced the application of the com- 
mon law of England as ‘inconsistent with republican principles 
contemplated and avowed in our Constitution, and inapplicable 
to the spirit and nature of our institutions,’ 4 and promised ‘a 
regular supply of the papers.’ ‘The Editor is on a bed of languish- 
ment, and the bookkeeper in prison, yet the cause of liberty will 
be supported amid these distressing circumstances.’ 


1 Independent Chronicle, February 25, 1799. 2 Ibid.,. April 11, 1799. 
* March 28, 1799, from ‘A Friend.’ # Jbid., March 7, 1799. 


THE REIGN OF TERROR 395 


The ‘convict’ was hurried off to jail, and into a damp, unhealthy 
cell where his feeble constitution threatened to succumb, until an 
indignant protest from without forced the jailer to transfer him to 
a better. The friends who flocked to see him were forced to convey 
their consolations through double-grated doors. Day by day the 
paper went to press, its spirit not one whit diminished. With the 
editor sinking under disease and the anticipated wreckage of his 
property, and the bookkeeper sick in jail and distressed over the 
condition of his wife and children, the fight was waged with un- 
diminished vigor.’ One day old Samuel Adams, his Revolutionary 
spirit ablaze, flaunted his respect for the editor and his contempt 
for the persecutors, by stalking to the jail and expressing his ad- 
miration through the bars.?. That day Adams’s prison doors were 
opened and he passed out to freedom; and the next day the readers 
of the ‘Chronicle’ knew that ‘Abijah Adams was discharged from 
his imprisonment after partaking of an adequate portion of his 
“birth-right” by a confinement of thirty days under the operation 
of the common law of England.’ * Within three weeks, Thomas 
Adams, one of the bravest champions of democracy and the free- 
dom of the press, was dead — his end hastened by the persecution 
to which he had been subjected. Like Benjamin Franklin Bache, 
he sank into his grave with an indictment under the Sedition Law 
hanging over him. 


VII 


When Bache thus escaped the vengeance of his enemies, they 
turned to his successor, William Duane, who soon proved himself a 
more vigorous controversialist than his predecessor. A remarkable 
character was Duane, entitled to a monument for his fight for the 
freedom of the press. Born in America of Irish parentage, he was 
taken to Ireland on the death of his father, and there he grew to 
manhood. His career previous to his return to America was color- 
ful and courageous. For a time he had been a reporter for the 
London ‘Times’ in the press gallery of the House of Commons, 
before establishing a newspaper in India which he edited with such 
signal ability that the East India Company found it advisable te 


1 Independent Chronicle, March 28, 1799. 
2 Ibid., April 25, 1799. 8 Ihid. 


396 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


resort to force and fraud to destroy his property and send him out 
of the country. At length in sheer disgust he returned to America, 
and soon became the editor of ‘The Aurora.’ ! 

One Friday night before the Monday on which the question of 
the repeal of the Alien Law was to be considered in Congress, a 
number of citizens, including some foreign-born, met in Phila- 
delphia to arrange for a memorial to Congress. On Sunday morn- 
ing, Duane and three others, including Dr. James Reynolds, ap- 
peared during services in the churchyard of Saint Mary’s Catholic 
Church with the memorial and a few placards requesting natives 
of Ireland in the congregation to remain in the yard after the 
services to sign the petition. Some of these placards were placed 
on the church and on the gates leading into the yard. Some be- 
lated worshipers of the Federalist persuasion tore these down, and, 
entering the church, warned the priest that seditious men were in 
the yard planning a riot. The four men in the yard conducted 
themselves with perfect decorum. When the congregation was dis- 
missed, Duane and his party had the memorial spread upon a tomb- 
stone. A few approached and signed. Almost immediately, how- 
ever, the terrorists among the members of the church closed in 
upon the group, centering their attacks mostly upon Reynolds, 
who was knocked down and kicked. Struggling to his feet, Rey- 
nolds drew a revolver and prepared to defend himself, at which 
moment officers reached the scene and the four men were hurried 
off to jail on the charge of creating a seditious riot. 

Before a great crowd at the State House, the trial was held, 
with Hopkinson, the author of the war song, as special prosecutor, 
and the men in the dock brilliantly defended by A. J. Dallas. The 
testimony showed-that there had been no disturbance until the 
mob charged upon the men with the memorial; that the memorial 
itself was unexceptionable in every way; that Reynolds had been 
warned a week before of a conspiracy to murder him and had armed 
himself on advice of a member of Congress; that none of the others 
carried a weapon of any sort; and it was shown by the testimony 
of a priest that it was then the custom in Ireland to post notices 
in churchyards, and for members of the church to transact such 
public business in the yards after services. Members of the con- 

1 Hudson, Journalism, 211-13. 


THE REIGN OF TERROR 397 


gregation testified that they had wanted to sign; the priest that 
the posting of the notice was not considered disrespectful to the 
church. In a brilliant speech of sarcasm and invective, Dallas 
riddled the prosecution, calling attention to attempts to intimidate 
lawyers from appearing for the defense, charging the prosecution 
with being inspired by partisan hate, and denouncing the Alien 
Law. Hopkinson replied lamely, attacking immigrants and Demo- 
crats. The jury retired, and in thirty minutes returned with a 
verdict of acquittal. The State House rang with cheers. The case, 
however, had not been tried in a Federal Court. 

That, however, was only the beginning of the attempt to wreck 
and ruin the leading Jeffersonian editor. John Adams and Picker- 
ing had been planning to reach him by hook or crook. The latter 
wrote Adams that Duane, though born in America, had gone to 
Ireland before the Revolution; that in India he ‘had been charged 
with some crime’; and that he had come to America ‘to stir up 
sedition.” More — he was ‘doubtless a United Irishman,’ and in 
case of a French invasion the military company he had formed ' 
would join the invaders. The picture was as Adams would have 
had it painted. ‘The matchless effrontery of Duane,’ he wrote, 
“merits the execution of the Alien Law. I am very willing to try 
its strength on him.’ This trial was never made, but two months 
later the Federal Courts began to move against him. At Norris- 
town, Pennsylvania, with Bushrod Washington and Richard 
Peters on the Bench, an indictment was brought against him for 
sedition.? The case was continued until June, 1800 — and Duane 
went full steam ahead with his attacks on the Federalist Party. 
The trial was again postponed, and in October, 1800, he was in- 
dicted again — this time for having published a Senate Bill of a 
peculiarly vicious if not criminal character which its sponsors for 
sufficient reasons wished kept from the public. But it was of no 
avail. He would not cringe or crawl or compromise or be silenced. 
The cases against him were dismissed when Jefferson became 
President. Many historians have belittled him; he fought bril- 
liantly for fundamental constitutional rights when men high in 
office, who are praised, were conspiring to strike them down. 


1 Wharton, State Trials, 345-91; Hudson, Journalism, 213-14. 
2 Aurora, October 22, 1799. 


398 - JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Vill 


One day the Sedition snoopers fell upon an article by Dr. 
Thomas Cooper, an Englishman by birth, a scientist and physician 
by profession, a man of learning and culture, and a Jeffersonian. 
It referred to the early days of Adams’s Administration when ‘he 
was hardly in the infancy of political mistake.’ It charged Adams 
with saddling the people with a permanent navy; with having 
borrowed money at eight per cent; referred to his “unnecessary 
violence of official expression which might justly have provoked 
war’; to his interference with the processes of a Federal Court in 
the case of Robbins. And that was all. Adams had made mistakes, 
had established a permanent navy, had borrowed money at eight 
per cent; and many thought at the time that he had unduly inter- 
posed in the Robbins case. But this was sedition in 1800. 

Hustled into the Federal Court at Philadelphia, Cooper found 
the red-faced Chase glowering upon him from the Bench — the 
same Chase who had been charged by Hamilton with speculating 
in flour during the Revolution. There was no denial of the author- 
ship of the article. The evidence in, Chase charged the jury in his 
most violent partisan manner. There are only two ways to destroy 
a republic, he said: one the introduction of luxury, the other the 
licentiousness of the press. ‘The latter is more slow but more sure.’ 
Taking up the Cooper article, he analyzed it in the spirit of a prose- 
cutor. Here, thundered the Judge, we have the opinion that 
Adams has good intentions but doubtful capacity. Borrowed 
money ‘at eight per cent in time of peace?’ What — call these 
times of peace? ‘I cannot suppress my feeling at this gross attack 
upon the President. Can this be true? Can you believe it? Are 
we now in time of peace? Is there no war?’ ? The jury promptly 
returned a verdict of guilty. The next day Cooper appeared for 
sentence. Asked by Chase to explain his financial condition as 
that might affect the sentence, he replied that he was in moder- 
ate circumstances, dependent on his practice, which would be de- 
stroyed by imprisonment. ‘Be it so,’ he continued. ‘I have been 
accustomed to make sacrifices to opinion, and I can make this. 
As to circumstances in extenuation, not being conscious that I 


1 It was true, of course, 


THE REIGN OF TERROR 399 


have set down aught in malice, I have nothing to extenuate.’ 
Chase became suspiciously unctuous and oily. If Cooper had to 
pay his own fine, that would be one thing; if his party had ar- 
ranged to pay the fine, that would be another. ‘The insinuations 
of the Court are ill founded,’ Cooper replied with indignation, 
‘and if you, sir, from misapprehension or misrepresentation, have 
been tempted to make them, your mistake should be corrected.’ 
Judge Peters, who had been squirming through these amazing 
partisan comments of Chase, here impatiently intervened with 
the comment that the Court had nothing to do with parties. 
Whereupon Cooper was fined a thousand dollars and ordered to 
jail for six months. 

Duane instantly announced an early publication in pamphlet 
form of the trial in full. ‘Republicans may rest completely as- 
sured,’ he wrote, ‘that they will have every reason to be satisfied 
with the effect of this most singular trial on the mind of the public.’ ? 
The pamphlet appeared, and, as Duane had foreseen, the public 
was aroused. A man of decent character and high professional 
standing was languishing in a jail in the capital of the country for 
having told the truth and expressed an opinion on a constitutional 
question. There were rumblings and grumblings in the streets, 
and some uneasiness in Administration circles. The hint went 
forth that an appeal for a pardon might receive consideration, and 
one was put in circulation, when out from the ‘convict’s’ cell 
came a letter of protest. He wanted and would have no petition 
for pardon. He believed with Adams that repentance should pre- 
cede pardon ° and he had no feeling of repentance. ‘Nor will I be 
the voluntary cat’s-paw of electioneering clemency,’ Cooper con- 
tinued. ‘I know that late events have greatly changed the out- 
ward and visible signs of the politics of the party, and good temper 
and moderation is the order of the day with the Federalists now, as 
it has always been with their political opponents. But all sudden 
conversions are suspicious, and I hope that Republicans will be 
upon their guard against the insidious or interested designs of 
those who may wish to profit by the too common credulity of 
honest intention.’ 4 


1 Wharton, State Trials, 658-81. 2 Aurora, April 25, 1800. 
8 Adams’s answer in the case of Lyon. * Aurora, May 17, 1800. 


400 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


The petition was dropped. Cooper remained happily in his cell. 
His incarceration was making votes for Jefferson. When, on the 
expiration of his sentence, Cooper stepped into the daylight, he 
found a deputation of his friends awaiting him at the door. He 
was escorted to a fashionable hotel where a public dinner had been 
arranged to honor him and express contempt for the Sedition Law. 
Two long tables were set, with Dr. James Logan presiding over 
one, Thomas Leiper over the other. That night, as the wine flowed, 
the men who would not be silenced drank to Cooper — to Jeffer- 
son — to a Democratic victory. 

TX i 

Having distinguished himself as an American Lord Clare in the 
case of Cooper, Chase proceeded southward, boasting along the 
way that he ‘would teach the lawyers in Virginia the difference be- 
tween liberty and licentiousness of the press.’ He was going to 
try James Thomas Callender for sedition on an indictment based 
on his pamphlet, ‘The Prospect Before Us.’ This unsavory crea- 
ture was hated quite as much for the truths he told as for the lies 
he circulated, and there was nothing in the section of his pamphlet 
on which he was indicted to shock any one to-day. It was an attack 
on Adams in connection with the French war hysteria, the navy, 
the army, the Robbins case. The only phrase that startles one to- 
day is the reference to the hands of Adams ‘reeking with the blood 
of the poor friendless Connecticut sailor.’ ? The scenes in the little 
Richmond courtroom were scandalous to excess. It was under- 
stood that Chase had instructed the marshal ‘not to put any of 
those creatures called Democrats on the jury,’ and his boasts 
concerning Virginia lawyers had preceded him. The most brazen 
tyranny presided in the case of Callender, and the lawlessness of 
the Judge was more threatening than the licentiousness of the 
culprit. It was a political inquisition, not a trial. The courtroom 
was thronged. The case was the sole topic of conversation in the 
streets and taverns. The Democrats had no misapprehensions of 
the nature of the trial, and three extraordinarily able lawyers were 


1 Scharf, 1, 505. 

* Robbins was turned over to the British, who claimed him as a national, and was exe- 
cuted for murder on the seas. Even Gallatin thought this an outrage until Marshall made 
his memorable speech in Congress in defense of the President’s action, 


THE REIGN OF TERROR 401 


there for the defense — John Hay, who was afterwards to prose- 
cute Burr, Nicholas, and William Wirt, already well advanced 
toward that professional eminence which he so long enjoyed. 
There was a dignity and courage in the aspect of these three men 
that Chase could only interpret as a challenge. He had made his 
boasts. He would teach these Virginia lawyers — and there was 
nothing apologetic or fawning in the manner of Hay, Nicholas, or 
Wirt. The fact that neither was there anything of insolence made 
matters worse. Feeling himself on the defensive, Chase sought to 
conceal his embarrassment in the brutality of his conduct. ) 

The shameful story of that travesty of a trial has been often 
told, and it played a part in the impeachment proceedings against 
Chase a little later. He stormed, fumed, spluttered, and injected 
Federalist stump speeches into the ludicrous proceedings. He re- 
fused the defense permission to ask a prospective juror if he had 
formed and expressed an opinion on the Callender pamphlet. ‘The 
question is improper and you shall not ask it,’ he thundered. 
When John Taylor of Caroline was put on the witness stand, Chase 
nervously demanded what the defense intended to prove by the 
witness. He was told. ‘Put the question in writing and submit it 
to me,’ he demanded. But why, asked Nicholas, when nothing 
of the sort in required in questioning witnesses for the prosecution ? 
‘It’s the proper procedure,’ fumed the Court. Keeping a firm 
rein on both his temper and his contempt for the Court, Nicholas 
submitted three questions in writing. One glance, and Chase 
ruled them out. The Virginia lawyers showed their amazement. 
Even Chase could see it. ‘My country has made me a Judge,’ he 
shouted, ‘and you must be governed now by my opinion.’ 

William Wirt rose to submit an argument on the admissibility of 
the evidence. He began with observations on the embarrassments 
of the defense because Callender had been ‘presented, indicted, ar- 
rested, and tried during this term and had not been able to procure 
testimony essential to a proper defense.’ He even hinted at the 
precipitancy of the Court. 

‘You must not reflect on the Court,’ shouted Chase. 

‘I am prevented from explaining to you [the jury] the causes 
which have conspired to weaken our defense, and it is no doubt 
right that I should be prevented, as the Court has so decided.’ 


402 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Chase saw at once that he was not going to care much for this 
‘young man,’ as he contemptuously called him repeatedly. Wirt 
proceeded to an attack on the constitutionality of the Sedition 
Law. 

‘Take your seat, sir,’ stormed the livid-faced Chase. ‘Ever 
since I came into Virginia I have understood that sort of thing 
would be urged, and I have deliberated on it.’ Whereupon he 
produced a long manuscript and prepared to read. ‘Hear my 
words,’ he admonished, glaring around the courtroom. ‘I wish 
the world to know them — my opinion is the result of mature 
reflection.’ 

Wirt undertook to argue the point — Chase gesticulated, 
stormed, insulted — and William Wirt folded his papers, and re- 
suming his seat declined to continue. Hay took up the argument, 
to be met constantly with barking interruptions, until he, too, in 
sheer disgust, folded his papers and sat down. 

‘Please to proceed,’ urged Chase, wondering perhaps if he had 
gone too far with these Virginia lawyers, ‘and be assured that you 
will not be interrupted by me, say what you will.’ Hay refused to 
continue the farce. 

Thus, throughout, the mobbing of Callender and his attorneys 
went on. The result was conviction and a jail sentence.! 


x 


Meanwhile, a serio-comedy in New York State which was work- 
ing effectively for the Democrats. In the early spring of 1800, 
John Armstrong, author of the ‘Newburgh Letters,’ and until this 
time an ardent Federalist, outraged by the brazen attempt to 
suppress free speech and the freedom of the press, prepared a 
powerful and vituperative petition for the repeal of the Sedition 
Law and sent it into several counties to be circulated for signa- 
tures. In Otsego, then a new and undeveloped part of the State, 
it was entrusted to Jedekiah Peck, an eccentric character known to 
every man, woman, and child in the county. Poor to poverty, he 
had combined the work of an itinerant surveyor with that of a 
preacher, and was popular as both. Wandering through the 
country surveying land by day, night found him in some settler’s 

1 Wharton, State Trials, 


THE REIGN OF TERROR 403 


home preaching and praying, and, in the intervals between, he 
talked politics. He had baptized the infant, preached the funeral 
sermons for the dead, married the young, prayed for and with the 
old. His sincerity was apparent, his innate kindliness manifest. 
Many smiled at the diminutive old man, but most men and all 
children loved him. Burr, who had a genius for using the right 
man in the right place, took him up and had him sent to the Legis- 
lature as a Federalist. 

Right joyously the little old man started on his rounds with the 
petition. When his activity was made known to Judge William 
Cooper, father of the novelist, and temperamentally as unfit for 
the Bench as a large number of the Judges of the time, he boiled 
with rage. Instantly he wrote the District Attorney of Peck’s 
heinous sedition. Immediately a grand jury was empaneled in the 
city of New York. A bench warrant for Peck’s arrest was issued. 
At midnight he was dragged from his bed, placed in manacles like 
a dangerous criminal, and the two-hundred-mile march to New 
York began. The roads were bad, progress was slow, the news 
spread, and in every village and at every crossroads crowds poured 
forth to look upon the pitiful spectacle and to sympathize with the 
victim. Jefferson could not have planned a more effective cam- 
paign tour. The plain people of the countryside knew Peck — 
and they turned away with a sense of personal outrage. For five 
days the march continued —it was a triumphant march for 
democracy. 

Thus the uneducated, itinerant preacher and surveyor of Otsego 
County made his contribution to the election of J efferson, march- 
ing in manacles to illustrate the Federalist conception of liberty.? 

Merrily the Terror sped along. 


XI 


The New London ‘Bee,’ under the editorship of Charles Holt, a 
Jeffersonian, had greatly annoyed the Federalists of the surround- 
ing States, and a remedy was now at hand. Had it not attacked 
the French war — and therefore tried to prevent enlistments? 
Here was sedition. The editor was arrested, his own brother sum- 
moned as a witness against him. There was more than one War 

1 Hammond, 1, 123-24, 2 Ibid., 131-32; Alexander, 89. 


404 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


of the Roses in those days. The paper on which he was indicted 
was furnished by two Federalist editors, one of whom had two 
brothers on the jury that brought in the indictment. The foreman 
of the grand jury was an Amos Bull who had been a British com- 
missary in New York during the Revolution.’ Bushrod Washing- 
ton presided at the trial. The defense undertook to show the Sedi- 
tion Law unconstitutional and the charges of the ‘Bee’ true. The 
friends of Holt ‘had collected from Dan to Beersheba to hear the 
trial and afford aid and comfort to their brother.’ When he was 
quickly convicted and sentenced to jail for three months and to 
pay a fine of two hundred dollars, a Federalist paper smugly com- 
mented upon the ‘mildness of the punishment’ and ‘the humanity 
of the Judges.’ 2 Like the other victims of the Terror, Holt took 
his punishment standing up, with shoulders thrown back. A few 
days before his trial he wrote boldly of the things he had refrained 
from saying — ‘the insults and threats offered to peaceable in- 
habitants and helpless women in the neighborhood, and the alarm 
and disturbance excited by firing in the streets and under the 
windows at all hours of the night.’ 3 

During the two years of the Terror the press was sprinkled with 
brief reports on arrests, mostly of Democratic editors. One at 
Mount Pleasant, New York, was arrested ‘in the name of the 
President for reprinting a paragraph from the New Windsor 
Gazette supposed to be a libel against the President,’ and he was 
forced to give bond for four thousand dollars. By November, 
1798, it was announced that twenty-one ‘printers’ had ‘fallen 
victims to the...Sedition Law.’*® In enumerating the arrests 
that month, the ‘Chronicle’ commented that no Federalist editor 
was included ‘because they vilify none but Jefferson, Livingston, 
and Gallatin.’ ® Everywhere men were being intimidated into 
silence. Sometimes there was a touch of comedy to the Terror. 
One poor wight was dragged into court because of a comment, 
when a salute was fired in honor of Adams, that it was a pity the 
ball did not find lodgment ‘in the seat of his pants.’ 

Strangely enough, there was no serious attempt to make use of 


1 Carey’s Diary; Aurora, January 17, 1800. 

2 Commercial Advertiser, April 23, 1800. 8 Aurora, April 9, 1800. 
4 Independent Chronicle, August 9, 1798. 8 Tbid., November 1, 1798. 

§ Ibid., November 26, 1798. 


— 


a 


THE REIGN OF TERROR 405 


the Alien Law. We have seen that about the time of its passage 
many Frenchmen chartered a boat to escape its operations, and 
America thus rid herself of the peril of Volney. General Victor 
Collot, an officer in the army of Rochambeau, escaped deportation 
by leaving voluntarily. The only appeal to the Alien Law was by 
indirection in the case of John D. Burk, editor of the ‘Time Piece,’ 
_ a democratic paper in New York City. He had left his native Ire- 
land to escape the terror there under Pitt, and finally ran foul of 
the law here by charging that a letter of Gerry to Adams, which 
the latter had sent to Congress, had been tampered with. The 
terrorists were not slow to act. When the offensive article stared 
at Pickering through his spectacles, he wrote the District Attorney: 
“Tf Burk is an alien no man is a fitter object for the operation of the 
Alien Law. Even if Burk should prove to be an alien it may be 
expedient to punish him for his libels before he is sent away.’ He 
had already been arrested for sedition, however, and the prosecu- 
tion was finally dropped on condition that he would leave the 
country. Instead of leaving, he went into hiding, only emerging 
from his obscurity with the inauguration of Jefferson. 

Many of the terrorists were infuriated by the failure to use the 
Alien Law for wholesale deportations. ‘Why in God’s name is the 
Alien Law not enforced?’ wrote the intolerant Tracy to McHenry. 
Everywhere the Sedition Law was keeping men ‘on the run.’ E.S. 
Thomas, learning that Thomas Adams, of the ‘Independent 
Chronicle,’ had been arrested for the publication of an article by 
the former, fled to South Carolina just in time.* In the capital at 
Philadelphia, the Jeffersonians, fearing an attack, met in secret 
and made plans for defense. Moreau De Saint Merys, a scholarly 
Frenchman who kept a bookstore, was given keys to two houses 
where he could take refuge should his own be attacked. He was 
quite incapable of anything that would have made him amenable 
to the law, and President Adams had not only lounged in his 
bookstore frequently, but the two had exchanged copies of their 
books. Hearing that Adams had written him down among the 
proscribed, Moreau appealed to Senator Langdon for the reason. 


1 “Enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Laws,’ by Anderson, American Historical Asso- 
ciation Report, 1912, 
2 Steiner, 436. 8’ Thomas, Reminiscences, 


406 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


‘No reason,” grunted Langdon, ‘beyond the fact that you are 
French.’ Finally, thanks to the courtesy of Liston, the British 
Minister, Moreau secured a passport and left the land of liberty 
with his books, maps, and papers.1 

Drunk with hate and a sense of power, the terrorists were run- 
ning amuck. At a banquet at Hartford in July, 1799, they thrilled 
to the toast: ‘The Alien and Sedition Laws: Like the Sword of 
Eden may they point everywhere to guard our country against 
intrigue from without and faction from within.’? And every 
Democrat knew that ‘faction’ was the Federalist name for party, 
and ‘party’ meant the Jeffersonians. Armed with the sword, the 
Federalists no longer bandied idle words. When George Nicholas 
of Kentucky challenged Robert Goodhue Harper to a debate 
through the press on the Sedition Law, the latter was merely 
amused. ‘The old proverb says, let them laugh who win; and for 
the converse of the maxim the consolation of railing ought to be 
allowed to those who lose,’ jeered Harper. Why argue? The 
courts were busy silencing and jailing the Jeffersonians, suppress- 
ing free speech, striking down the liberty of the press. 

With the Democrats partly intimidated in the Eastern States, 
the honor of leading the fight against these laws was reserved for 
Virginia and the frontier States of Kentucky and Tennessee. Here 
mass meetings were held throughout the autumn of 1798. In 
Woodford County, Kentucky, it was declared ‘the primary duty 
of every good citizen to guard as a faithful sentinel his constitu- 
tional rights and to repel all violations of them from whatever 
quarter offered.’ * Four hundred gathered in Goochland County, 
Virginia, and, with only t_.irty opposed, denounced the laws and 
called upon the next Assembly to protest to Congress.> At 
Charlottesville, at the foot of Monticello, the people of Albe- 
marle County, Virginia, met to adopt resolutions of denunciation, 
and at Lexington, Kentucky, they added their protest.6 Richmond 
— Knoxville — followed. These resolutions were dignified and 
forceful protests, sponsored by men of the first ability in the com- 
munities acting. But in the House of Representatives at Phila- 


1 The Nation, July 18, 1912; Moreau’s Journal. 
° Gazette of the United States, July 10, 1799. 8 Aurora, November 4, 1799, 
4 Independent Chronicle, September 27, 1798. 5 Ibid, 6 Iind, 


THE REIGN OF TERROR 407 


delphia, when Jeffersonians spoke in favor of the repeal of the ob- 
noxious measures, their voices were drowned by loud conversa- 
tion, coughs, laughter, the scraping of the feet of the Federalists. 
“Livingston, however, attempted to speak,’ wrote Jefferson, ‘but 
aiter a few sentences the Speaker called him to order... . It was 
impossible to proceed.’?! From 1798 until 1801, liberty was 
mobbed in America with the zealous support of the Federal 
Courts, to the applause of the church — and out of these con- 
ditions came the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. 


XII 


On the adjournment of Congress in 1798, Jefferson returned to 
his Virginia home profoundly impressed with the significance of 
the obnoxious laws. He had supposed that the freedom of speech 
and the liberty of the press had been guaranteed by the Constitu- 
tion. That the fundamental law was outraged by these measures 
he had no doubt. It was his firm conviction that they had been 
enacted ‘as an experiment on the American mind to see how far it 
will bear an avowed violation of the Constitution,’ and that if it 
succeeded ‘we shall immediately see attempted another act of 
Congress declaring that the President shall continue in office for 
life.’ ?. He was not alone in this belief. 

One day in the late summer a memorable conference was held 
at Monticello. There, in the center of the group, was Jefferson. 
There, too, was W. C. Nicholas, one of the foremost Jeffersonians 
of Virginia, and John Breckenridge of Kentucky, who had returned 
on a visit to his native State. It does not appear that Madison 
participated in this conference, although he was in complete ac- 
cord with its purpose. There the plan was perfected to launch a 
movement of protest against the Alien and Sedition Laws through 
the Legislatures of the various States in resolutions pronouncing 
them violative of the Constitution and void. While Jefferson, re- 
calling the occasion a quarter of a century later, thought that he 
had been pressed to frame such resolutions, it is unlikely that the 
plan did not originate in his own mind. He had an uncanny 
faculty for calling forth suggestions from others to meet his views. 


1 Jefferson’s Works (to Madison), x, 119-21. 
2 Ibid. (to Senator Mason), x, 61-62. 


408 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


On one point his memory was clear — there was to be the utmost 
secrecy as to the part he played. That he did prepare a draft is 
thoroughly established; that the draft finally submitted to the 
Kentucky Legislature, while based on the Jeffersonian draft, was 
the work of John Breckenridge has been convincingly maintained.! 

This dashing young leader of the Kentucky Democracy had 
been a marked figure from his earliest youth. More than six feet in 
height, spare and muscular in build, with the strength and grace of 
carriage born of his wilderness training, he looked the leader of 
men. His hair, a rich chestnut tending to auburn, disclosed some- 
thing of his ardent temperament and was not unlike that of his 
idolized chief. His brown eyes could be stern or tender. His ad- 
dress was easy and dignified, and his manner not without that 
touch of gravity which creates confidence in the follower. There 
was much of tenderness and everything of generosity in his nature 
to explain the love which enveloped him wherever he went. 

Born of Scotch-Irish stock in Virginia thirty-eight years before, 
his had been an extraordinary career. Scarcely was he out of col- 
lege when, without any effort on his part, he was elected to the 
Virginia House of Delegates at the age of nineteen. When the 
House refused him his seat because of his age, his loyal constituents 
elected him again. Again refused his seat, he was elected for the 
third time, and seated. During the next five years he distinguished 
himself by his industry and ability no less than by the charm of 
his personality. It was about this time that the young man as- 
cended the hill to Monticello to sit at the feet of the god of his 
idolatry. Jefferson was impressed by ‘the large scope of his mind,’ 
his great store of information, and ‘the moral direction’ of his 
ideas.2 There had to be something extraordinary in the man to 
whom Gallatin looked a little later as the man best qualified to 
continue the work of Jefferson, Madison, and himself.® 

At the bar Breckenridge distinguished himself by his erudition, 
his industry, and the fluency and force of his arguments, which 
were notably free from the floridity then so popular in the South. 
Elected to Congress when thirty-three, he had abandoned his seat 
to remove to Lexington, Kentucky, where he acquired a large 


1 Warfield, The Kentucky Resolutions, 183-65. 
 Tbid., 55. 3 Ibid., 70. 


THE REIGN OF TERROR 409 


plantation and settled down to the practice of his profession. Al- 
most immediately he was deeply engaged in politics. He was 
made President of the Democratic Society of Kentucky and be- 
came one of the most engaging of the Democratic leaders of the 
pioneer State. Returning to Kentucky with the Jefferson draft, 
he made some changes, and on November 8th presented the Reso- 
lutions to the Legislature. The debate was brief, and on the 10th 
they were adopted. 

The Virginia Resolutions, written by James Madison after 
conferences with Jefferson, were introduced in the Legislature of 
that State by the celebrated John Taylor of Caroline. These, too, 
were speedily adopted after a brilliant debate in which their spon- 
sor and Giles crossed swords with the eloquent George Keith Taylor. 

The primary purpose of these Resolutions was to concentrate 
attention on the Alien and Sedition Laws. They were to be sent to 
the Legislatures of all the States where they would be thoroughly 
discussed. Jefferson was too wise to have expected a favorable 
response from Legislatures dominated by the Federalists. But 
there would be debate, agitation, newspaper controversy — the 
hated laws would have the searchlight turned full upon them. 
Historians have been interested in these Resolutions because they 
set forth in the most impressive manner the compact theory of the 
Union on which the nullificationists and secessionists were to 
seize much later as justification for their course. We are interested 
here in the contemporary view and the political aspect. The 
reader of to-day is apt to overlook the fact that they were prima- 
rily intended as a protest against interference with the freedom of 
speech and the liberty of the press, and only ‘incidentally they 
gave expression to a theory concerning the nature of the federal 
union.’? That this was the general contemporary interpretation 
is Shown in the actions of the other Legislatures. Thus Maryland, 
Federalist, rejected the Resolutions as ‘highly improper’ because 
“a recommendation to repeal the Alien and Sedition Laws would 
be unwise and impolitic.’ 2? Thus Delaware, Federalist, dismissed 

1 Frank M. Anderson, ‘Contemporary Opinion of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolu- 
tions,’ American Historical Review, October, 1899; January, 1900. 
? Professor Anderson calls attention to the fact that in Maryland the endorsement of the 


Alien and Sedition Laws was made more prominent than the condemnation of the proposed 
remedy. pe oF 


410) JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


them as a ‘very unjustifiable interference with the general govern- 
ment.’ Thus New Hampshire, Federalist, declared the obnoxious 
laws ‘constitutional and ... highly expedient.’ The Federalists of 
Rhode Island pronounced them ‘within the powers delegated to 
Congress and promotive of the welfare of the United States.’ 

Only in Massachusetts did the Federalists make a comprehen- 
sive and argumentative reply to the effect that the constitution- 
ality of measures could only be passed upon by the Supreme Court. 
The Alien and Sedition Laws were defended as in no wise inter- 
fering with the liberty of the press. And here, strangely enough, 
Democrats were found to support the Resolutions in speeches of 
no mean merit. In John Bacon of Berkshire the Jeffersonians had 
their sole representative in the State Senate. Formerly a minister 
of the Old South Church, and a speaker of some ability, he de- 
livered a carefully prepared speech assailing the constitutionality 
of the oppressive laws, and gave it to the press.! Dr. Aaron Hill of 
Cambridge, a Jeffersonian in the House, acted similarly in that 
body — and on both Hill and Bacon the floodgates of falsehood 
and abuse were opened. In an open letter to Bacon in the ‘ Centi- 
nel,’ he was charged with having been a Tory, with having quar- 
reled with the congregation at the Old South, with having owned, 
as slaves, a married couple, and with having sold the husband into 
a distant State.2, When Bacon proved the charges shamelessly 
false, the ‘Centinel’ took no notice.’ Dr. Hill fared quite as badly 
when students from Harvard exercised their learning by smashing 
the windows and casements of his home.‘ And it was at this junc- 
ture that Thomas Adams, of the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ was 
indicted and Abijah Adams was thrown into a cell for criticizing 
the action of the Legislature. 

Everywhere the Federalist papers made the Resolutions the 
occasion for a justification of the Alien and Sedition Laws; every- 
where the Jeffersonians, usually refraining from a discussion of the 

1 Independent Chronicle, February 14, 1799. 2 Centinel, February 27, 1799. 

3 Professor Anderson comments on this unfairness. 

4 Anderson, op. cit. 

5 Professor Anderson says: ‘The imprisonment of Adams indicates that the Federalists 
were ready on the slightest provocation to treat opposition to the policy of the Administra- 
tion, whether federal or state, as crime. That case certainly does much to explain why 


Jefferson and other Republican leaders could fear that Republican institutions were about 
to be overthrown.’ American Historical Review, January, 1900, p. 229. 


THE REIGN OF TERROR 411 


theory of the Federal Union advanced, made them the pretext for 
a denunciation of the laws. And significantly enough, it was re- 
served for the favorite Federalist organ of ‘Porcupine’ to preach 
and all but urge secession. Replying to a correspondent who had 
denied the right of secession, ‘Porcupine’ said: “Does he imagine 
that the industrious and orderly people of New England will ever 
suffer themselves to be governed by an impious philosopher or a 
gambling profligate imposed upon them by Virginia influence? If 
he does, he knows very little of New England. The New England- . 
ers know well that they are the rock of the Union. They know 
their own value; they feel their strength, and they will have their 
full share of influence in the federal government, or they will not 
be governed by it. It is clear that their influence must decrease; 
because... the Middle and Southern States are increasing In in- 
habitants five times as fast as New England is. If Pennsylvania 
joins her influence to that of New England the balance will be 
kept up; but the moment she decidedly throws it into the scale with 
Virginia the balance is gone, New England loses her influence in 
the national Government, and she establishes a Government of 
her own.’! This reflects the spirit of the times when the two par- 
ties faced each other for the decisive battle of 1800. The Alien 
and Sedition Laws and the Terror were issues; the Kentucky and 
Virginia Resolutions played scarcely any part at all. 
1 Anderson, op. cit. 


CHAPTER XVIII 
ADAMS PULLS DOWN THE PILLARS 


I 


EANWHILE, the Federalist leaders, having, as they 
thought, cowed and crushed the Democrats, were engaged 
in an internecine strife for control. There was to be war —at all 
hazards a war. It was to be a Federalist war, with Jeffersonians 
rigidly excluded from all places of command. But more than that, 
it had to be a war personally conducted by Alexander Hamilton — 
with no unseemly interference from John Adams. This was the 
grim determination of the radical Federalists everywhere, even 
the Essex Junto, in the President’s own State, sharing it with the 
three leading members of the Adams Cabinet. Thus, when Adams 
one day casually asked Pickering who should be made Commander- 
in-Chief of the army, and the spectacled Puritan unhesitatingly 
answered, ‘Colonel Hamilton,’ there was an ominous silence. 
When, on another occasion, the same question elicited the identi- 
cal answer, with a similar silence, even Pickering must have 
sensed the situation. But when, after a third question had brought 
the same answer, and Adams, a little annoyed, had rejected the 
suggestion with the sharp observation, ‘It is not his turn by a 
great deal,’ Pickering might have dropped his plans without dis- 
grace... But nothing was more remote from his intentions. 
It was at this time that the conspirators, including the three 
members of the Cabinet, put their heads together to devise ways 
and means of forcing the appointment of their idol. The chief com- 
mand would naturally be offered to Washington, who would accept 
the position in an honorary sense, but old age and infirmities would 
make his activities and authority but perfunctory. The important 
thing was to secure the second position for Hamilton — and even 
there was a rub. Adams was prejudiced. 
Then, one day, Adams ordered McHenry to Mount Vernon to 
profier the chief command to Washington, with a request for ad- 
1 Intimate Life, 323-24. 


ADAMS PULLS DOWN THE PILLARS 413 


vice in the formation of the officers’ list. The names of several 
eligibles for the leading posts, enumerated by Adams, might be 
mentioned. Hamilton was among them, but he was fourth on the 
list. That day McHenry hastened to Pickering, and the conspiracy 
against the President in his own household began to unfold. It 
was agreed that Pickering should send a personal letter on ahead 
urging Hamilton for second place, McHenry should reénforce 
Pickering’s plea in person, Hamilton should be instantly notified 
and a letter from him should be delivered to Washington along 
with the commission from Adams. Thus, when the smug-faced 
little War Secretary, more familiar with the pen of the rhymester 
than with the sword of the soldier, bade his chief adieu and set out 
upon his mission, he was the messenger of his chief’s dearest 
enemy, prepared to exhaust his ingenuity in thwarting the plans 
of the man of whom he was a subordinate and on whose mission 
he went forth. 

As early as June, Washington had planned to make Hamilton 
Inspector-General, but without placing him ahead of Pinckney or 
Knox, both of whom outranked him in the old army.! Just what 
treachery McHenry practiced as he sat on the veranda at Mount 
Vernon those July days will never be positively known. That he 
pleaded the cause of Hamilton against the wishes of his chief there 
can be no doubt. That it was he who suggested that Washington 
should make his own acceptance conditional on having absolute 
power in the selection of his subordinates is more than probable. 
At any rate, when he returned to Philadelphia he carried in 
Washington’s handwriting the names of the three Major-Gener- 
als — Hamilton, Pinckney, and Knox, in the order given. In this 
order Adams, who assumed that their relative positions would be 
determined by himself, sent them to the Senate and they were 
confirmed. 

Soon the Federalist camp was in fermentation as to whether 
Knox, favored by the President, or Hamilton, preferred by the 
party bosses, should be second in command. Pinckney, who ac- 
cepted slights with the same contrite spirit with which his brother 
had stepped aside for Jay in London, agreed to serve under the 
Federalist leader, but Knox, not so humble, refused, and the crisis 

1 Hamilton’s Works, x, 287. 


414 _ JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


came. Personally fond of Knox, the quarrel was embarrassing to 
Washington, but it had never been the habit of the Hamiltonians 
to spare him where their wishes were involved. Soon Hamilton 
was bombarding Mount Vernon with letters strikingly lacking in 
the spirit of humility. His claims were superior to those of Knox or 
Pinckney, and the Federalists preferred him to the former.) ‘If I 
am to be degraded beneath my just claims in public opinion, ought 
I acquiesce?’ he wrote the sympathetic Pickering? To McHenry 
he wrote that he would not surrender the first place to which he 
‘had been called by the voice of the country’;? to Washington that 
the Federalists of New England favored him over Knox.! 

All the while the three leading members of the Cabinet were 
concocting plans for the humiliation of Adams, taking their orders 
from Hamilton, who, from his law office in New York, was direct- 
ing the fight of the President’s trusted advisers against their chief. 
One day the angels looked down and smiled through tears on the 
spectacle of McHenry writing a letter to Knox fixing his status, 
from a model in the handwriting of Alexander Hamilton.’ As 
Adams stubbornly held his ground, one by one all the Hamilton- 
ians of consequence were drawn into the conspiracy against him. 

One evening the secretarial conspirators sat about a table 
phrasing a persuasive note to Adams which Wolcott, the most 
consummate deceiver of the three, should sign and send as his 
personal view. ‘Public opinion’ favored Hamilton, Washington 
preferred him, and ‘Knox [has] no popular character even in 
Massachusetts.’ § Having dispatched this cunning letter, Wolcott 
immediately wrote his real chief in New York that ‘measures have 
been taken to bring all right,’ and requesting Hamilton neither 
to do nor to say anything ‘until you hear from me.’?7 Another 
little caucus of conspirators in Boston: present, Cabot, Ames, and 
Higginson; purpose, the framing of a letter to Adams that Cabot 
should sign, assuring the President of a ‘remarkable uniformity of 
sentiment’ in New England for Hamilton over Knox.® Having 
sent this letter, Cabot wrote confidentially to Pickering suggesting 
that General Wadsworth, who was ‘accustomed to tell [Knox] his 


1 Hamilton’s Works, x, 301. 2 Ibid., 297-98. _ * Ibid., $10. 
4 Thid., 311, 5 Hamilton’s Works (to McHenry), x, 307. 
® Gibbs, m1, 93-99, 7 Ibid. 8 Lodge, Cabot, 165-67. 


ADAMS PULLS DOWN THE PILLARS 415 


faults,’ should be enlisted in the cause.1 Meanwhile Pickering, 
more sinister, if less deceptive than the others, was seeking to in- 
timidate his chief by having Hamiltonian Senators declare that 
the officers had been confirmed with the understanding that 
Hamilton stood at the head.? 

All this time, Iago-like letters were going forth from members of 
the Cabinet to Washington conveying the impression that Adams 
was contemptuously indifferent to the great man’s wishes. The 
effect was all that could have been desired. In a surprisingly of- 
fensive note, Washington wrote peremptorily to the President de- 
manding to know ‘at once and precisely’ what was to be expected.3 
Such a letter from a less popular idol would have elicited an answer 
sharp and decisive; but, taking discretion for the wiser course, 
Adams swallowed his pride and wrote a conciliatory note, not 
neglecting, however, to remind the man who had presided over the 
Constitutional Convention that under the Constitution the Presi- 
dent, and no one else, ‘has the authority to determine the rank of 
the officers.’ 4 Thus the issue was closed, with Hamilton trium- 
phant, but with Adams awaiting only an opportunity for revenge. 
The tiny cloud that had appeared in the beginning of the Admin- 
istration was now dark and large and threatening. 


II 


Having won with Hamilton, the Federalist leaders now turned 
to another part of their programme — the rigid exclusion of Jeffer- 
sonians from commissions in the army. This was to be a Federalist 
war, nothing less. Even Washington, who had, by this time, be- 
come a partisan Federalist, was in sympathy with the view that 
the friends of Jefferson, Madison, Hancock, and Sam Adams 
should be proscribed. This appears in his consultations with John 
Marshall as to the personnel of the army,’ and in a letter to 
McHenry referring to the ‘erroneous political opinions’ of an ap- 
plicant.? This enlistment of Washington in the proscriptive poli- 
cies of the Federalists is directly traceable to the Iagos who were 
writing him all the while. Hamilton was solemnly assuring him 
that the Democrats were ‘determined to go every length with 


1 Lodge, Cabot,170-71. 2 Pickering, m1, 432. ? Gibbs, m1, 99. 4 Ibid., 100, 
* Beveridge, u, 420, 6 Steiner, 354. Here, however, he qualifies, 





416 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


France’ and to ‘form with her a perpetual offensive and defensive 
alliance and to give her a monopoly of our trade.’ ! 

Thus one day Adams sat in conference with Washington on the 
organization of the army. Knowing Aaron Burr as a brave and 
able officer anxious to fight, he wished to recognize the Democrats 
by giving him a commission. Washington, much under the influ- 
ence of Hamilton, conceded Burr’s capacity, but opposed his ap- 
pointment because he was a master of intrigue. Through the mind 
of Adams, hampered in his plans at every turn, flashed the vivid 
memory of how his predecessor had forced him to humiliate his 
own friends in the appointment of Hamilton — ‘the most restless, 
impatient, artful, indefatigable, and unprincipled intriguer in the 
United States.” But — as he afterward wrote — he was ‘not per- 
mitted to nominate Burr.’ 2 Here again the traitors in the Cab- 
inet had played their part.® 

But the war was not to be national, but Federalist. ‘Every one 
of them [Democrats] ought to be rejected, and only men of fair 
property employed in the higher and more confidential grades,’ 
wrote a Federalist Representative to Wolcott. When Adams’s 
son-in-law applied for a commission his application was held until 
he sent a certificate that he had not interfered in a gubernatorial 
election in New York.® So zealously did the minor politicians enter 
into this policy of proscription that some of the wiser leaders began 
to take alarm. Even a friend of McHenry at Baltimore was moved 
to protest. ‘They seemed to imagine that nothing was left to be 
done but to exterminate every one who had been on the Demo- 
cratic side’ he complained. Even Hamilton finally thought fit to 
call for a moderation of the programme. ‘It does not seem ad- 
visable,’ he wrote McHenry, ‘to exclude all hope and to give to ap- 
pointments too absolute a party feature.’’ But there was no relent- 
ing in party circles, and no one had done more to arouse this 
fanatical spirit than Hamilton himself. 

The climax of stupidity was reached in the case of Frederick A. 
Muhlenberg, former Speaker of the House, a leader and oracle 
among the Germans of Pennsylvania, but no blind follower of 


1 Hamiton’s Works, x, 286. 2 Parton, Burr, 1, 235-36. 
3 Gibbs (Pickering to Wolcott), nm, 71. 4 Ibid. (from Goodrich), 105. 
§ Steiner (McHenry to Tracy), 328. § Jiid. (from James Ash), 333. 7 Ibid., 368. 





ADAMS PULLS _ DOWN THE PILLARS 417 


Federalism. In a spirit of pure patriotism he had personally of- 
fered the service of his sword to Adams, whose wish to accept it 
was again thwarted by Washington, acting under the inspiration 
of the Federalist leaders. Whereupon Muhlenberg marched with 
the Germans as a body into the Jeffersonian camp and enlisted for 
another war.} 

Under this proscriptive program the Jeffersonians remained 
mute but for a few sarcastic comments in their press. “General 
Washington must have some very keen reflection,’ said the 
‘Independent Chronicle,’ ‘in taking command of the army of the 
present day, in seeing so many new friends who were his old ene- 
mies during the Revolution.’ ? When it was reported that Robert 
Goodhue Harper had been made Commissioner-General, it 
chortled, ‘What lawyer would not plead for such a fee?’ * And it 
had reflected on Adams’s ‘pretence’ for piety in connection with 
his appointment of Hamilton, ‘who published a book to prove 
that he was an adulterer.’ 4 

Bitter as were the reflections of Adams on reading such observa- 
tions, it could have mattered little to Hamilton. Everything he 
had started out to get he got. He wanted a war with France — 
and got it. He wanted the command directly under Washington 
as he had wanted nothing else in his life — and got it, by striding 
to his sword over the humiliated pride of the President. He wanted 
an army of fifty thousand men, and, if he fell short in this, he 
nevertheless had an army. He was on the crest of the wave, the 
most powerful man in America, and he was happy. 


III 


Feeling that supreme fortune was within his grasp, Hamilton 
threw all his enthusiasm and vitality into the task of perfecting 
the army and organizing the Nation for war. ‘The law has aban- 
doned him, or rather he has forsaken it,’ wrote a friend to King. 
Preparing the plan for the fortification of New York Harbor, he 
personally superintended its execution. He had worked out to the 
minutest detail the organization of the army and all he lacked 
was men and a declaration of war. But alas, he was confronted 


1 Adams, Works, x, 120-23. 2 July 12, 1798. 8 September 17, 1798. 
4 July 30, 1798. 5 King’s Works (from Troup), 11, 35. 





418 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


on every hand by disheartening difficulties. The recruiting fell 
pathetically short of anticipations, the War Department under the 
Secretary of his own choosing was pitifully inefficient, and, while 
the army was woefully below the provisions of Congress, even the 
fragment was not adequately clothed or provisioned, and there 
was a deficiency of tents. In a rage, Hamilton wrote angrily to 
McHenry: ‘Why, dear friend, why do you suffer the business of 
providing to go on as it does? Every moment proves the insuffi- 
ciency of the existing plan and the necessity of auxiliaries. I have 
no doubt that at Baltimore, New York, Providence, and Boston 
additional supplies of clothing may promptly be procured and pre- 
pared by your agents, and it ought to be done, though it may en- 
hance the expense. ’Tis terrible... that there should be wants 
everywhere. So of tents. Calls for them are repeated from Massa- 
chusetts where better and cheaper than anywhere else they can 
certainly be provided.’ ! 

The truth is that the hysteria for getting at the throat of the 
French democracy was over almost as soon as it began, and the 
masses commenced to reflect on the cost, as the war measures 
grew apace. Jefferson, noting the increasing boldness of opposition 
in Pennsylvania, where petitions were signed by four thousand 
people protesting against the Alien and Sedition Laws, standing 
armies, and extraordinary war powers for the President, and ob- 
serving similar unrest in New Jersey and New York, and ‘even in 
New Hampshire,’ was fearful of insurrection. ‘Nothing could be 
so fatal,’ he wrote. ‘Anything like force would check the progress 
of public opinion.’ ? 

When Wolcott tried to float a loan, he found the moneyed men 
cold to the regular legal rate of interest, for their patriotic passion 
had suffered a chill when it came to cash. After all, business was 
business, and why should the Federalist men of money fail to get in 
on the profits? It was not hard to persuade Wolcott, who had a 
sentimental weakness for the financiers, and he could see nothing 
unreasonable in a demand for eight per cent. The rates for stocks 
were good, commercial prospects were alluring, and after all, eight 
per cent would be but ‘moderate terms.’ Adams, sore from the un- 


1 Hamilton’s Works, x, 354. 
2 Jefferson’s Works (to Pendleton), x, 104-10, 





ADAMS PULLS DOWN THE PILLARS 419 


merciful pummeling from his party, was outraged at such a rate,! 
but Wolcott persisted — it was the only way. War was war as 
business was business. Finally, in sheer disgust, Adams capitu- 
lated to necessity with the exclamation: ‘This damned army will 
be the ruin of this country; if it must be so, it must; I cannot help 
it. Issue your proposals as you please.’ 2 When Hamilton had 
urged that all the resources of revenue be seized upon, Adams 
thought him mad, but it soon became evident that something of 
the sort would be necessary.? 

Aha, said the ‘Independent Chronicle,’ ‘‘‘millions for defence 
but not one cent for tribute.” This has been the language of those 
who are in favor of war. The patriotism of such persons is every 
day becoming more and more evident. A loan of five million has 
been attempted, but instead of the old legal rate of six per cent 
these modern patriots have required the moderate premium of 
Eight. At this rate we shall soon verify the first part of the motto, 
viz., ““millions for defence,” but whether the latter is not violated 
by the extra interest is left to the decision of those who are to bear 
the burdens.’ 4 And they who were to pay the piper gave an ac- 
quiescent nod. 

The taxes which the war party had levied with such patriotic 
abandon aroused bitter resentment. Among the Germans of 
Pennsylvania, the taxes on houses, lands, and windows were con- 
sidered the beginning of a system which would extend to every- 
thing. The immediate outcome was an insurrection led by John 
Fries, an ignorant son of a German farmer, and the marching of the 
troops and the easy dissipation of the incipient rebellion against 
the assessors.® 

About that time Hamilton arrived in Philadelphia. ‘For what 
purpose?’ inquired ‘The Aurora.’ ‘Can it be to foment another 
insurrection and thereby to increase the energies of the Govern- 
ment? What distinguished citizen is there in the counties of 
Northampton and Bucks that he wishes to glut his vengeance 


1 Gibbs (Higginson to Wolcott), m, 177. 

2 Adams, Works, x, 126-31. 3 Ibid. ¢ January 28, 1799. 

5 McMaster (1, 435) makes the statement that ‘Republicans were fully determined that 
the direct tax should not be gathered.’ There is abundant evidence, including the letter 
from Jefferson, previously quoted, that the Republicans thought an insurrection against 
the collection the worse possible thing for the party. 


4.20 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


upon? Does he wish that Easton may be burned to afford him a 
pretext for military execution?’ ! If there were no executions, 
the people had a touch of military rule. A troop of horse from 
Lancaster committed outrages on citizens at Reading, and Jacob 
Schneider, a local editor, commented with severity upon their 
actions. On their return through Reading these troops went to the 
editor’s office, tore his clothing from his back, dragged him to the 
Market House, and were preparing to give him twenty-five lashes 
when troops from Philadelphia interfered.2?, The brutality of the 
soldiers shocked the country. The prisoners taken on the ex- 
pedition were treated with the same unnecessary cruelty which 
marked the treatment of the rebels in the Whiskey Insurrection. 
Ignorant or besotted with partisan passion, under a lax discipline, 
and contemptuous of the civil government, many soldiers strutting 
about in uniforms, insulting and attacking citizens, convinced the 
majority of the people that the Jeffersonians were right in their 
observations upon the evils of standing armies. 

No one had denounced these excesses with greater vehemence 
than William Duane, editor of ‘The Aurora.’ One day some petty 
officers in uniforms, swords and pistols on their persons, said by 
Duane to have numbered thirty and by his enemies to have been 
fifteen, entered his office. With drawn pistols the compositors and 
pressmen were driven into a corner and kept at bay by a part of 
the assailants. Some grasped and held Duane’s hands while others 
beat him over the head with the butt end of a pistol. Then with 
ten gallant soldiers participating in the assault on the one man, he 
was brutally dragged downstairs into Franklin Court, where the 
assault was repeated. He was knocked down and kicked. The 
editor’s request to be permitted to fight any one of them was 
ignored, and had not his sixteen-year-old son thrown himself 
across his father’s body, and a number of Democrats arrived to 
give battle, he would have been murdered in cold blood. That 
night armed Democrats went to the ‘Aurora’ office prepared to 
give shot for shot if an attempt should be made to destroy the 
plant. ‘Porcupine’ chortled, and young Fenno declared that 


1 March 22, 1799. This refers to Hamilton’s efforts to involve Gallatin in the Whiskey 
Rebellion. 

2 Aurora, April 14 and April 27, 1799; McMaster, n, 438-39. 

3 Ilid., May 16, 1799; Hudson, 214; McMaster, 1, 439, 


ADAMS PULLS DOWN THE PILLARS 421 


‘the punishment of this caitiff is of no more consequence than that 
of any other vagabond.’ Besides, did not every one know that ‘the 
infernal Aurora and the United Irishman who conducts it’ were 
“expressly chargeable with the Northampton Insurrection?’ } 

With such encouragement from the organs of the Administra- 
tion, these outrages by soldiers soon became commonplace wher- 
ever they were assembled, with uniformed ruffians swaggering 
down the streets pushing civilians into the gutters, taking liberties 
with women, picking quarrels while drunk, and slashing and lung- 
ing with dirk and sword.? This bullying spirit affected the petty 
officers and reached a climax when civil officials, armed with a 
warrant for a thief who had escaped to the soldiers near Philadel- 
phia, were literally kicked out of the camp, their warrant cursed 
and trampled.’ With the tide rising rapidly against both the war 
and the army, the recruiting lagged. Adams in later years recalled 
that the army was as unpopular ‘as if it had been a ferocious wild 
beast let loose upon the nation to devour it.’4 With the recruiting 
officers putting forth their utmost efforts, ‘with all the influence 
of Hamilton, reénforced by the magical name of Washington,’ 
they were unable to ‘raise one half of their... little army.’ 5 
Duane wrote that before the law creating the army passed ‘there 
were 15,000 applications for commissions — since the passing of 
the law there have been only 3000 soldiers.’ ® There is more than a 
touch of irony in the fact that while the Administration papers 
were vilifying the Irish, ‘three fifths of the men enlisted were 
Irish immigrants.’ ? 

But there was another reason for the failure in recruiting — the 
people soon concluded that some one had cried ‘wolf’ when there 
was no wolf. No one, including Hamilton, believed that France 
had the most remote notion of warring on the United States. The 
impression grew that the army was intended for purposes other 
than the protection of the country from a foreign foe. Meanwhile, 
the taxes were bearing hard, the national debt was mounting and 
the passion for peace returned. Right gallantly the war party 
sought to reawaken the fine frenzy of the hysterical days of the 


1 Gazette of the United States, May 16,1799. — - 

* Aurora, June 25, August 5, 1799, 5 Ibid., September 24, 1799, 
4 Adams, Works, x, 116-19. 8 Ibid. 

* Aurora, January 10, 1800, S {oid., February 27, 1800, 


4.22 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


X Y Z papers. The preachers were as distressed over the possibil- 
ity of peace as the politicians, and a convention of ministers in Bos- 
ton issued a war cry. ‘ You will see by these things that the clergy 
are not asleep this way,’ wrote a Massachusetts man to Wol- 
cott. ‘They ought everywhere to be awake.’! From the New York 
‘Commercial Advertiser’ came a pathetic attempt to sweep back 
the rising tide for peace: ‘The necessity in times like the present in 
cherishing the war spirit ...is evident.’ 2 Apropos of the report 
that the French were ready to make every concession to our inter- 
est and pride, the ‘Centinel’ in Boston sent forth the warning, 
‘The trying time is now approaching’; * but the rabble, as the 
masses were called, could see nothing distressing in winning a war 
without the loss of a drop of blood. Fenno’s ‘Gazette,’ comment- 
ing on the business stagnation, promised that ‘a war with France 
would within two months revivify every department of society, 
commerce would be invigorated, the funds would rise, and every 
employment of life would receive new vigor.’ 4 This sordid note he 
was soon to strike again.® But it was all unavailing. The enlist- 
ments dwindled to nothing, common soldiers were actually cheer- 
ing the Democratic Governor in the streets of Philadelphia, no one 
feared an invasion, and, as Wolcott confided to Fisher Ames, “no 
one has thought it prudent to say that the army is kept to suppress 
or prevent rebellions.’*® To make matters all the worse, desertions 
multiplied until the harassed McHenry was writing Hamilton 
urging executions. The little rhymester was far beyond his depths, 
scolded by Washington, kicked like a flunky by Hamilton in one 
or two letters a day. But the idea of shooting a deserter was a bit 
too high-toned for Hamilton. ‘There must be some caution,’ he 
wrote, ‘not to render our military system odious by giving it the 
appearance of being sanguinary.’ 7 Adams was prepared for ex- 
treme measures. but it was decided to leave the decision with 
Hamilton and McHenry — which meant with Hamilton. ‘If the 
virtuous General Hamilton is determined upon shooting every 
soldier who deserts,’ said ‘The Aurora,’ ‘Billy Wilcox’s court 
martial will be kept at pretty constant duty. In a Daily Adver- 


1 Gibbs, u, 241; Morse to Wolcott. 2 May 14, 1799. 
3 June 1, 1799. 4 May 16, 1799. 6 July 18, 1799. 
6 Gibbs, nu, 313-18, ¥ Steiner, 382. 


ADAMS PULLS DOWN THE PILLARS 423 


tiser of last week no less than ten of these strayed gentlemen are 
advertised for apprehension at $10 a head.’ 2 
But Hamilton was too wise to shoot. 


IV 


The war cry was sinking to a hoarse whisper when Dr. James 
Logan, who had entertained the Washingtons, and who was a fol- 
lower of Jefferson, quietly slipped out of Philadelphia one day and 
sailed for France — and the war hawks were in a frenzy. When 
Logan, at his own expense and wholly on his own volition, went to 
Paris, it was to determine the state of the public mind there for 
himself. He was a leading citizen, his family familiar to society, 
his home one of the most cultured in the community, and, aside 
from being a friend of the French democracy, he was a Quaker and 
an enemy of war. He felt that the country had been deceived by 
war propaganda, and he determined to find out for himself. 

The war wing of the Federalist Party knew that an investigation 
in Paris was the one thing they could not afford. No one knew 
better that war was unnecessary and that the French were ready if 
not eager to recede. Harrison Gray Otis knew it best of all because 
his fellow Federalist of Boston and classmate, Richard Codman, 
was writing him from Paris of the French disposition for peace 
and conciliation. But this was being carefully concealed from the 
American people. Thus, when Logan sailed it was clearly the cue 
for the war party to hint darkly of weird conspiracies with the 
French and a factional embassy from the Democrats. Soon 
Harper, who had a supersensitive nose for conspiracies and trea- 
son, was hinting mysteriously on the floor of the House of a 
traitorous correspondence between the French Directory and the 
Jeffersonian Party. The truth is that, when Logan foolishly made 
a mystery of his departure and almost surreptitiously stole out 
of Philadelphia, he carried letters from Jefferson and Governor 
McKean. Four or five days before his departure he had informed 
Jefferson of his purpose and asked for letters of introduction and a 
certification of his citizenship. It was not a secret that Jefferson 
was opposed to a preventable war, but no instructions were given 
the Doctor, no communication was sent by Jefferson, and there 

1 August 21, 1799. 


424 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


was no conspiracy at all.! Thus, on his own volition Logan went to 
Paris, talked with Otis’s Federalist friend Codman and other 
Americans, conversed with leading Frenchmen, dined with Merlin, 
met Talleyrand, and ascertained, as he had expected, that peace 
could be preserved with honor. A simple, honest man, with none 
of the crooked mental twists of the professional politician, he re- 
turned with the confident expectation that the President and his 
advisers would be glad to get the benefit of his observations. He 
reached Philadelphia to find himself the object of immeasurable 
abuse. 

Not doubting that Pickering would be glad to have his impres- 
sions, Logan went first to him. This was, in truth, a ludicrous per- 
formance, and a Federalist paper was moved to mirth because he 
had ‘actually unfolded his budget to Pickering’ and ‘needless to 
say’ returned ‘with a bug in his ear.’? Going on to Trenton, the 
temporary seat of government, he saw Washington, to be received 
with more than his customary coldness. He had a message from 
Lafayette to Washington. ‘Aye,’ said the General. And one from 
Kosciusko. ‘Aye,’ said Washington. Whereupon Logan courte- 
ously proffered him the use of his home, which the Washingtons 
had often found agreeable, while in Philadelphia, to have his offer 
curtly declined. Even Pinckney haughtily refused the use of Lo- 
gan’s carriage when the General was seeking a conveyance to the 
capital. ‘This fellow Logan had the unparalleled efirontery to 
offer the General a seat in his carriage,’ sneered a war paper.? 
Some historians insist that Adams treated him contemptuously, 
and this seems probable in the light of the latter’s letter to Pick- 
ering,‘ albeit Gibbs records that Adams was much impressed with 
Logan’s story and with his sincerity and candor.’ The letter was 
written to Pickering, however, before the interview was granted. 

When Congress met, Logan found himself the subject of a bitter 
debate brought on by the introduction of the so-called ‘Logan 
Law’ prohibiting unofficial meddling in international affairs. 
Harper had followed his cue and found his conspiracy. Logan had 

1 Jefferson’s Works (to Madison), x, 49-53; (to Gerry), x, 74-86. All of which is borne 
ont by the signed statement of Logan, whose veracity was more reliable than that of 
arper. 


2 New York Commercial Advertiser, November 15, 1798. ; 
8 Ibid.. November 22, 1798. ¢ Adams, Works, viu, 615. 5 Gibbs, uo, 193. 


ADAMS PULLS DOWN THE PILLARS 425 


actually presented a paper to the Directory as from one having 
authority. The story was all too thin, the facts too badly twisted, 
and the Jeffersonians under the leadership of Gallatin showed 
their teeth. The climax came when Harper read the paper which 
Logan was presumed to have presented. Then, through frank 
letters in ‘The Aurora,’ Logan brought out the truth to the dis- 
comfiture of the war hawks. In view of the scurvy treatment he 
has received, his own statement is one of value. He had been met 
at Hamburg by Lafayette, who had furnished him with the means 
to proceed to Paris. There he found negotiations at an end. 
Knowing no law, ‘moral or political,’ that prevented him from 
serving his country, he had sought interviews with leading char- 
acters and found France anxious for peace. Whereupon he had 
suggested the lifting of the embargo on American shipping de- 
tained in French ports and the release of American sailors held 
prisoners. He had not gone to Paris ‘at the direction or on the re- 
quest or on the advice of any person whatever.’ He went for his 
own pleasure, on his own views, and at his own expense.! Not 
only had the memorial Harper had read to the house not been 
presented by him, it had not been written by him, but by a good 
Federalist who was an intimate friend and correspondent of Harri- 
son Gray Otis, and he had refused the request to present it on the 
ground of its ‘having too much the appearance of an official act.’ ? 
The absolute veracity of this story was known to Otis, who was 
intimate with Harper, for he had a letter from Codman in verifica- 
tion, and to the effect that Logan had told Talleyrand that in the 
event of war all parties in America would rally around the Govern- 
ment ‘and oppose all its enemies.’ 3 

Thus there was a conspiracy, a peculiarly ugly conspiracy, of 
the war hawks to ruin an honest, patriotic, if Quixotic man because 
of his interference with their plans to manufacture a needless and 
therefore a criminal war. 

But there was a special reason for the war party’s rage over 
Logan. About this time Elbridge Gerry, one of the three envoys, 
who had stayed over in Paris on the invitation of Talleyrand, had 
returned with a similar story. The Federalists had been outraged 
by his failure to leave with his colleagues, and on his return to his 

1 Aurora, January 3, 1799. 2 Ihid., January 16,1799. * Morison, Otis, 1, 168-71. 


4.26 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


home in Cambridge he found himself socially ostracized. Adams, 
who was his friend, had severely condemned him for continuing 
his conferences in Paris.1 So bitter was the feeling against him, 
that the war party did not scruple to terrorize his family in his 
absence. His wife received anonymous letters charging that a 
woman was responsible for his lingering in Paris. With only 
women and children in his house, their nights were made hideous 
with yells and bonfires under their windows; and one morning 
Mrs. Gerry looked out of the window on a miniature guillotine 
smeared with blood. On his return, Gerry had gone to Philadel- 
phia and left his dispatches, which Pickering had published with 
his intemperate comments. The Federalists were well pleased with 
Pickering’s excoriation. 

And Jefferson? So different was his conception of public opinion 
that he was delighted. Seizing upon the Gerry correspondence as a 
complete answer to the X Y Z papers, he wrote Edmund Pendleton 
that it was too voluminous for the masses, and urging him to pre- 
pare ‘a capitulation ... stating everything... short, simple, and 
leveled to every capacity ...so concise, as, omitting nothing 
material, may yet be printed in handbills, of which we could print 
and disperse ten or twelve thousand copies under letter covers, 
through all the United States by the members of Congress when 
they return home.’ ? 

Meanwhile, Gerry had hastened to Quincy, and in the rambling 
frame house of the President was going over the situation with 
him, 


Vv 


The restoration of peace with France would mean the end of the 
army created with so much expense and trouble. So determined 
were the Hamiltonians on war that they were ready to wreck the 
Federalist Party on the issue. Many explanations have been of- 
fered. Wolcott had hinted in his letter to Ames that an army was 
wanted for domestic use.? That was the common charge of the 
Democrats. That there was another and more portentous reason 
we may be sure, albeit the public, and even John Adams, was 
ignorant of it. 

1 Adams, Works, vin, 617. 2 Jefferson’s Works, x, 86-89. 8 Gibbs, m1, 313-18, 


ADAMS PULLS DOWN THE PILLARS 427 


At that time a queer little Latin-American soldier of fortune, 
Francesco de Miranda, was living in London, playing about 
Downing Street, and conferring with Rufus King, the American 
Minister, who, next to Morris, was the ablest of Hamilton’s 
lieutenants. There was a possibility that at any time England 
might be forced to war on Spain should that country enter into the 
struggle on the side of France. The United States was then en- 
gaged in a quarrel with Spain. It was the idea of Miranda to enlist 
England and the United States in a grand revolutionary scheme in 
South America. He had discussed it with the British Ministers 
and with King, who was in correspondence with Hamilton. It in- 
volved an alliance between the English-speaking countries. This 
had been hinted at, as we have seen, long before, by Hamilton in a 
letter to Pickering, who was in favor of entering into such an alli- 
ance without delay. It was the plan of Miranda for England to 
furnish the ships, not exceeding twenty, men and money; the 
United States to supply no less than seven thousand soldiers, two 
thousand of these being cavalry. The lure of Florida and Cuba 
was held out to the United States.! Here was a grand scheme of 
conquest that appealed irresistibly to Hamilton’s ambition for 
military glory.?, Entirely unknown to Adams or Washington, 
Hamilton had been in correspondence with the soldier of fortune, 
and in communication with him through King who was managing 
the London end of the affair. He made it plain to King that in the 
event of a successful issue he would want the United States to be 
the principal agency. ‘The command in this case would very 
naturally fall upon me, and I hope I should disappoint no favor- 
able anticipations,’ he wrote. He thought the country not quite 
ripe for the enterprise, but “we ripen fast, and it may, I think, be 
rapidly brought to maturity if an efficient negotiation for the pur- 
pose is at once set on foot.’ To Miranda he was writing that he 
would not embark in the affair ‘unless patronized by the Govern- 
ment of this country.’ An army of twelve thousand men was 
being raised. ‘General Washington has resumed his station at the 
head of our armies, I am second in command.’ In the autumn of 
1798, he was writing Senator Gunn on the importance of heavy 


1 Adams, Adams, 1, 523-24. 2 Lodge, Hamilton, 212. 
? Hamilton’s Works (to King), x, 314-15. ¢ Thid., 315-16. 


428 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


cannon for fortifications and mortars in the case of a siege. ‘If we 
engage in war our game will be to attack where we can. France is 
not to be considered as separated from her ally. Tempting objects 
will be within our grasp.’ ! In January, 1799, Hamilton was writing 
Otis in the same strain. ‘If universal empire is still to be the pur- 
suit of France, what can tend to defeat that purpose better than 
to detach South America from Spain....The Executive ought 
to be put in a situation to embrace favorable conjunctures for 
effecting that separation.’ 2? With all this Pickering was familiar 
and in sympathy, but Adams was in total ignorance. In time the 
subject was cautiously broached to him, to be rejected with the 
curt notation that we were not at war with Spain. But the record 
is too clear to leave the South American project out of considera- 
tion in seeking the reason for the intense desire for war — and a 
large army. Through all this period, Hamilton had visions of him- 
self on horseback, at the head of troops in South America, with 
England as an ally.’ 

Never had Hamilton felt himself so near the top of the world. | 
When Congress met in the fall of 1798, he had a plan ready for a 
complete change in the formation of the Nation. This provided 
for eighty United States District Courts;4 the division of old 
States into new ones for any territory having as many as 100,000 
people on the request of any considerable number — which would 
or could have made seven States out of Virginia; and for the ex- 
tensicn and more rigid enforcement of the Sedition Law. 

It was on this state of affairs that Adams, perplexed, harassed, 
worried by the serious illness of Abigail, aching under the humilia- 
tions visited upon him by the bosses of his party, meditated during 
the summer and early fall of 1798. And he thought seriously, too, 
on what Gerry had told him of the temper of France. 


VI 


This had almost persuaded him that a new mission to France 
was feasible, when a letter from Murray at The Hague, indicating 
uneasiness in Paris lest the United States be forced into an alli- 


1 Randall, Jefferson, m1, 464. 2 Hamilton’s Works, x, 389. 
3 See King’s Works, 1, 649-66; m1, 556, 565; Adams, Works; x, 145 and 147, 
At the rate of four for Connecticut with a population of 250,000. 


ADAMS PULLS DOWN THE PILLARS 429 


ance with England, convinced him. Thus, about the middle of 
October, in a letter to Pickering, he submitted two questions for 
the consideration of the Cabinet. ‘Should there be a declaration 
of war?’ ‘Could proposals for further negotiations be made with 
safety, and should a new envoy be named, prepared to sail on as- 
surances that he would be received?’ 

That letter fell like a bomb in the camp of the war conspirators. 
How Pickering must have scowled, and McHenry grumbled, and 
Wolcott shrugged his shoulders with a cynical grin when they sat 
down to meditate on its meaning. That more important person- 
ages were informed we may be sure. To that note, however, the 
Cabinet did not deign to reply. Had not Adams declared that he 
would never send another envoy unless solemnly assured that he 
would be received? No such assurance had come. Then why dis- 
cuss 1t—even on the request of the President? However, a 
_ Message would have to be sent to Congress, and with Adams ina 
conciliatory frame of mind it was imperative that something defi- 
nite await him on his arrival. Thus the conspirators sat down to 
the framing of a Message that would defeat the very purpose the 
letter had indicated. Hamilton and Pinckney were summoned to 
the conference. The result was a paragraph putting it squarely up 
to France to take the initiative in the matter of a renewal of 
negotiations. Wolcott, who, better than any of the others, could 
hide his treachery behind an ingratiating urbanity, was put for- 
ward as the author. Reaching the capital, Adams summoned his 
Cabinet to go over the Message. All went well until the fateful 
paragraph was reached, and instantly the keen eye of the suspi- 
cious old man caught its full significance. That, he would not ac- 
cept, and an open struggle began. With earnestness and even heat 
the obnoxious paragraph was urged upon him, but Adams planted 
his feet and stood. He would rewrite that paragraph to conform to 
his personal view of the proprieties.! 

The Cabinet conspirators retired with the realization that there 
were dark days ahead. Adams in his substitute held forth the olive 
branch to the extent of declaring that no new envoy would be sent 
unless assurances were forthcoming that he would be properly re- 
ceived. Washington, Hamilton, and Pinckney, in uniforms, sat in 

1 Adams, Adams, 1, 536. 


430 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


the chamber when the Message was read. Two of these, at least, 
had grave forebodings. Then it was that the conspirators deter- 
mined to override Adams by meeting his plan for negotiations 
with an immediate declaration of war. A caucus of the Federalists 
was called. The most brilliant and fiery orators were primed for 
the occasion. The proposal was made and supported with elo- 
quence. The vote was taken, and by a small majority Adams 
triumphed over his foes. This was the most significant incident 
yet — it meant that Hamilton had lost control of the party coun- 
cils.! With that knowledge, Pickering made no further attempt to 
conceal his bitter hostility to his chief. Ordered to prepare a 
treaty that would be acceptable, he ignored the request. Asked 
to moderate his report on the Gerry dispatches, he refused. 
Among his associates he was bitterly resentful, and all this was 
carried to the President, who cunningly simulated ignorance of 
what was happening. Then, at length, came the desired assurances 
from Talleyrand, that an envoy would be ‘received as the repre- 
sentative of a great, free, powerful, and independent nation.’ 
That was enough. Adams was ready for action. 

Thus, without further warning to the Cabinet, a messenger from 
the President appeared in the Senate on February 18th with the 
nomination of Murray as Minister to France. The Federalists 
were paralyzed. Jefferson, equally amazed, managed to conceal 
his pleasure over the evident discomfiture of his foes.? Almost a 
week later he still suspected that the nomination had been sent 
‘hoping the Federalists ... would accept the responsibility of re- 
jecting it.’ ? But the Federalist Senators had no such suspicion. 
Their faces betrayed their indignation. That night they met in 
caucus with their war paint on, and the decision was reached to 
defeat the confirmation. They still had the whip hand. If Adams 
would modify in some way — At any rate, he should remain in no 
doubt as to their opinion of his action. A committee, consisting of 
Bingham, Read, Sedgwick, Ross, and Stockton, was named to 
wait upon him, and a note was sent requesting an audience. The 
reply left them in no doubt as to the fighting mood of the man they 
sought to intimidate. He would be very glad to receive them ‘as 


1 Adams, Adams, 1, 538-39. , 
8 Jefferson’s Works (to Madison), x, 110-13. 8 Ibid. (to Madison), 119-21. 


ADAMS PULLS DOWN THE PILLARS 431 


gentlemen, at his house, at seven in the evening.’ At the appointed 
hour they were ushered into the audience room. No one was there. 
Then the door opened, and Adams, the picture of dignity on short 
legs, entered. 

‘Gentlemen, I am glad to see you as friends and Senators; but 
as a committee interfering, as I think you are, with my executive 
duties, I cannot consent to receive you, and I protest against all 
such interference. I have a duty to execute, and so have you. I 
know and shall do mine, and I want neither your opinion nor aid 
in its execution.’ 

At which he politely asked them to be seated. 

Not a little nonplussed by his masterful manner, Bingham 
apologetically explained that there was no thought of interference, 
but merely a disposition to reconcile differences of opinion. 

‘Well, then, gentlemen,’ snapped Adams, ‘if you are determined 
to interfere in diplomatic matters, reject Mr. Murray. You have 
the power to do this, and you may do it; but it will be upon your 
own responsibility.’ 

As mildly as possible it was suggested that Adams’s action, so 
soon after the insult, would be interpreted as a humiliation. 

‘I know more of diplomatic forms than all of you,’ Adams hotly 
replied with perfect truth. ‘It was in France that we received the 
Insult, and in France I am determined that we shall receive the 
reparation.’ 

Forced to compromise, a commission was then suggested. 

“Who would you have me send?’ Adams demanded, an ugly ex- 
pression on his face. ‘Shall I send Theophilus Parsons, or some 
of your other Essex rulers? No, I will send none of them.’ 

At this the committee showed its teeth with the threat to defeat 
the confirmation. Adams, infuriated by the threat, replied that 
there was a party determined to rule him, but that they would fail. 

That night when the caucus met again, it was decided to reject 
the nomination. Meanwhile, the effect outside the Senate was 
quite as sensational. Duane announced the nomination the day 
after it reached the Senate, in large type. The next day ‘Porcu- 
pine’ fired a broadside. 


1 Pickering, m1, 439. According to another version, Adams received the committee po 
litely until Sedgwick angered him with a slurring remark on Gerry. 


432 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


‘For the last two days,’ he said, ‘there has been a most atrocious 
falsehood in circulation... that the President... has intimated 
by a messenger to the Senate that he has resolved on sending an- 
other plenipotentiary to treat with the French Republic. Every 
one must perceive the falsehood on the front of this; yet have 
audacious wretches dared to promulgate it without hesitation and 
they have even named the plenipotentiary, Mr. Murray....I 
will not expatiate upon the consequences of such a step... be- 
cause I cannot suppose the step within the compass of possibility; 
but I must observe that had he taken such a step it would have 
been instantaneously followed by the loss of every friend worth 
preserving.’ ! Encouraged by the applause of the Federalists, he re- 
curred to it the next day with a denunciation of ‘a mere fabrication 
intended to alienate the President’s friends . . . at this momentous 
crisis and sink his character in the eyes of all Europe and America.’? 
But two days later, the ferocious ‘Porcupine’ had changed his 
tune and was singing low, with the absurd protestation that he had 
‘never published a word with regard to the President that could 
possibly be construed into disrespect.’ He had discovered he was 
amenable to the Alien Law he had so stoutly defended! 

Adams had asserted himself and was happy, and when Pickering 
was writing Washington that his successor was ‘suffering the tor- 
ments of the damned,’ Adams was writing cheerfully to his wife 
that he could hardly be chosen President a second time, and would 
be glad of the relief. ‘‘To-night I must go to the ball; where I sup- 
pose I shall get cold and have to eat gruel for breakfast for a week 
afterwards.’ * The determined little patriot was now on the top 
of the world, and now it was his enemies that were guessing. The 
senatorial committee had been an idea of Hamilton’s, to whom 
Sedgwick had hastened the news of the nomination. The com- 
mittee had failed. Even the suggestion of two more envoys had 
been scorned. Something might still be done through conciliation. 
Ellsworth, the Chief Justice, had Adams’s confidence and he was 
sent to try his powers of persuasion, and succeeded. Thus, the 
nominations of Murray, Ellsworth, and Patrick Henry were sent 
to the Senate, and confirmed without even a whimper from ‘Por- 


1 Porcupine’s Gazette, February 20, 1799. 3 Ibid., February 21, 1799. 
8 Jbid., February 28, 1799. 4 Adams, Adams, 1, 544-45, 


ADAMS PULLS DOWN THE PILLARS 433 


cupine.’ But beneath the surface, the passions were seething. 
Sedgwick wrote King that he had not ‘conversed with an indi- 
vidual ... who did not unequivocably reprobate the measure.’ ! 
Tracy, who had wanted to arm the women and children against 
the French, wrote McHenry that while he had sacrificed much ‘to 
root out Democracy,’ he thought it ‘to be lost and worse.’ 2? Cabot 
assured King that ‘surprise, indignation, grief, and disgust fol- 
lowed each other in quick succession in the breasts of the true 
friends of the country,’* and informed Pickering that he had 
written ‘a piece’ about it for the Boston papers, but that ‘the 
Boston press had been fixed by the President’s friends and it had 
not appeared.’ 4 To King, he ascribed Adams’s action to jealousy 
of Hamilton and Washington.’ Pickering wrote Cabot that ‘the 
President’s character can never be retrieved.’ * Stephen Higgin- 
son, the merchant prince of the Essex Junto, found the world dark 
indeed. Why had not war been declared in the summer of 1798? 
Even the powers given Adams by the Alien and Sedition Laws 
had not been used!7 Jonathan Mason was furicus because ‘from 
being respectable in Europe, from having convinced Great Britain 
and from having associated with all the friends of Order, Property, 
and Society ... we must again become soothers and suppliants for 
peace from a gang of pitiful robbers.’ ® Ames wrote that the new 
embassy “disgusts most men here’ because they thought ‘peace 
with France... an evil.’ ® Even at Adams’s table the jeremiads 
of the Federalists were heard, and the dinners were somber affairs. 
Bayard of Delaware was loud in his lamentations. 

‘Mr. Bayard, I am surprised to hear you express yourself in this 
manner, said Adams. ‘Would you prefer a war with France to a 
war with England in the present state of the world; would you wish 
for an alliance with Great Britain and a war with France? If you 
would, your opinions are totally different from mine.’ 

‘Great Britain is very powerful,’ Bayard replied mournfully. 
“Her navy is very terrible.’ 1° 

When at the end of the session, Adams set forth for his seat at 
Braintree, Harper expressed the hope that his horses might run 


1 King’s Works, m, 68. 2 Steiner, 416. 3 King’s Works, rx, 249. 
4 Lodge, Cabot, 224-26. 5 King’s Works, m1, 7-10. ® Lodge, Cabot, 221. 
7 Gibbs (to Wolcott), n, 229-30. 8 Morison, Otis (to Otis), 1, 171. 


* Ames (to Dwight), 1, 252. 10 Morison, Oizs, 1, 174-75. 


43.4 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


away and break his neck.! Only John Jay, among the outstanding 
Federalists, could see no objections to the mission, but he was al- 
ways bothered by scruples. : 


VII 


It was unfortunate that Adams’s love for Braintree caused him 
to desert the capital in this crisis. The policy of the conspirators 
was to wear out their chief’s purpose through procrastination, and, 
in the meanwhile, to bring all possible pressure to bear to restore 
his secret enemies to his good graces. He had made the sailing of 
the envoys conditional on a direct assurance from France as to the 
reception they would receive. Under the most favorable conditions 
this meant months of delay, and the tréacherous policy of Picker- 
ing made it worse. On March 6th Adams instructed his Secretary 
of State to mnform Murray of the conditions, but it was not until 
in May that the latter heard from Pickering. Talleyrand was im- 
mediately informed, and within a week Murray was in possession 
of the required official assurances, but it was the last day of July 
before they reached Philadelphia. Disappointing to the conspira- 
tors though these were, a careful study of the Talleyrand note 
disclosed a touch of annoyance over the delay. The insolence of 
the man! Another insult! The conspirators determined if pos- 
sible to make this the occasion for further delay. If Adams could 
only be persuaded to insist upon an explanation of the impatient 
paragraph, more time would be gained, and Pickering strongly 
recommended this in his note transmitting the Talleyrand letter 
to the President. But Adams was too wary now to be easily caught. 
Replying dryly that he could overlook the language for the deed, 
he instructed Pickering that, while preparations for war proceeded, 
the commission should be hurried to Ellsworth and Governor 
Davie — for the latter had been named in the place of Henry, who 
had declined — with instructions to prepare for embarkation at 
any moment. 

Meanwhile, with Pickering taking six weeks in the preparations 
of the instructions, efforts were being made to coax Adams into 
his enemies’ camp. One day Cabot suavely presented himself at 
the house at Braintree on a purely social neighborly visit. He went 

1 Anas, 1, 351-52. - 


ADAMS PULLS DOWN THE PILLARS 435 


at the instance of the Hamiltonians to wheedle the old man back 
into their clutches. That the ablest politician of the Essex Junto 
was affectionately friendly, we may be sure, but his courtesy was 
matched by that of Adams and Mrs. Adams, and he: stayed for 
dinner. But Abigail never left the room. The President occa- 
sionally went out, Abigail never. Though she was gracious to a 
degree. Thus the door of opportunity was closed and locked and 
Abigail had the key. Cabot found that ‘every heart was locked 
and every tongue was silenced upon all topics that bore affinity to 
those which I wished to touch.’ ! Hamilton was in intimate touch 
with the leading members of the Adams Cabinet all the while — 
far more so than Adams; but the President knew of the movements 
of his dearest enemy through the Jeffersonian press. The latter 
part of April found Hamilton in Philadelphia with Gouverneur 
Morris, in close communion with Pickering, Wolcott, and Mc- 
Henry. Duane flippantly announced that they had ‘kept the fast 
in Philadelphia,’ and that ‘a pair more pious, more chaste, more 
moral perhaps never mortified the flesh and the spirit since the days 
of David and the fair Shunammite.’? At Braintree Adams was 
keeping his own counsels, enjoying the serenity of domesticity, 
with occasional excursions into Boston to attend church or the 
theater, always accompanied by the Marshal of the district. When 
the Boston Troop went to Braintree to accompany him, with 
military pomp, to the Harvard Commencement, he was enor- 
mously pleased.*? But he was on the alert. About the time Picker- 
ing’s belated instructions reached him with a letter from the 
Cabinet suggesting the suspension of the mission for a time, he 
read a cautiously worded note from Stoddert, his Secretary of the 
Navy, hinting at the importance of his presence in Trenton, 
whither the Government had temporarily gone because of the 
prevalence of yellow fever again in Philadelphia. Adams was able 
to read between the lines. 

The silent treatment to which the conspirators were being sub- 
jected annoyed them beyond endurance. They were by no means 
certain it was a hoax when they read in ‘The Aurora’ on August 
15th that ‘the Executive of the United States has ordered the 


1 King’s Works (Cabot to King), m1, 111; (to Pickering), 228; (to Wolcott), 229, 
8 Aurora, April 27, 1799. 3 Centinel, June 8, June 17, 1799. 


436 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


frigate “John Adams” to be prepared to carry our envoys without 
delay to Europe,’ and the ‘Centinel’ in Boston was not able to 
deny it for several days.! In September, Pickering was urging 
Cabot to persuade Ellsworth to dissuade Adams from sending the 
mission. ‘There is nothing in politics he despises more than this 
mission,’ he wrote.? Ellsworth did as he was bid — with a differ- 
ence. He asked that early notice be given him of the plans be- 
cause of ‘unusual demands upon his time on the official circuit.’ ® 
The real attitude of Ellsworth is not at all plain, for it was being 
whispered about that he hoped to reach the Presidency through 
the success of the mission. 4 

Then came another pretext for delay. There had come another 
shift in French politics, with some indications of the restoration of 
the Jacobins to power, and Talleyrand had resigned. Did this not 
call for further postponement? Adams replied in the affirmative, 
fixing the latter part of October as the limit, and promising to be 
in Trenton by the middle of that month. Rejoicing in this delay, 
Pickering began to meditate on the possible intervention of the 
Senate. With this in view he wrote Cabot for advice. The reply 
was wholly unsatisfactory. ‘If the Senate should be admitted to 
possess a right to determine a priori what foreign connections 
should be sought or shunned, I should fear that they would soon 
exhibit the humiliating spectacle of cap and hats which so long 
and so naturally appeared in Sweden,’ said Cabot.’ Adams had 
the power, and he was silent. The conspirators began to mobilize 
for a desperate attempt at Trenton. 


VIII 


On October 6th, Adams drove down the road from Braintree 
on his way to Trenton with such secrecy that he was halfway 
there before Cabot knew he had gone. The conspirators were 
there before him, Pinckney on the ground, Hamilton at Newark 
within easy call. Ellsworth had been summoned from Hartford. 
Governor Davie, having received a flattering address from his 

1 August 28, 1799. 2 Lodge, Cabot, 237. 

§ Adams, Adams, 1, 554. 

“ Stoddert was reported to have told General Sam Smith that this was in his mind; Anas, 


1, 849-50. 
5 Lodge, Cabot, 240-42. * King’s Works (Cabot to King), m1, 114. 


ADAMS PULLS DOWN THE PILLARS 437 


fellow citizens at Raleigh, was on the road, ‘a troop of horse and a 
cavalcade of citizens escorting him four miles on his way.’ ! 

Adams reached Trenton on Thursday, and on Friday night 
there was ‘a handsome display of fireworks’ in his honor, ‘in 
which Mr. Guimpe, the artist, exhibited much skill and ingenuity.’ 
The initials of Adams and Washington ‘displayed in colored fires 
was received with shouts of applause.’ On Saturday, Ellsworth 
arrived. Hamilton appeared upon the scene. Just at that junc- 
ture the conspirators were much elated with the news of the suc- 
cesses of the British army under the Duke of York in Holland, 
and the triumphant march of the Russians under Suwarrow in 
Switzerland. Might not the next report bring the news of the 
restoration of the Bourbons in France, and the end to the hideous 
nightmare of democracy? Here was a new club, and the con- 
spirators laid eager hands upon it. Hamilton called to urge the 
point. 

‘Why, Sir, by Christmas Louis XVIII will be seated upon his 
throne,’ he declared. 

‘By whom?’ demanded Adams. 

‘By the coalition,’ Hamilton replied. 

‘Ah, then,’ said Adams, ‘farewell to the independence of 
Europe.’ ? 

When the President entertained the two envoys at dinner, he 
was amazed to find Ellsworth echoing the views of Hamilton. 

“Is it possible, Mr. Chief Justice,’ demanded Adams, ‘that you 
can seriously believe that the Bourbons are, or will soon be re- 
stored to the throne of France?’ 

‘Why,’ said Ellsworth, smiling sheepishly, ‘it looks a good deal 
so.’ 

‘I should not be afraid to stake my life upon it that they will not 
be restored for seven years, if they ever are,’ was Adams’s retort. 

The coincidence in the views of the two men was not lost on 
Adams, who asked a member of his Cabinet if ‘Ellsworth and 
Hamilton had come all the way from Windsor and New York to 
persuade me to countermand the mission.’ That was an ominous 
comment. The resulting excitement among his advisers did not 


1 Centinel, October 9, 1799. | 2 Anas, 1, 349. 
* Brown, Life of Ellsworth, 279. 4 Ibid, 


438 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


escape the watchful eye of Adams, who wrote Abigail that it left 
him ‘calmly cold.’ 

On the night of October 15th Adams, calm, cold, thrice-armed, 
sat about the table with his Cabinet, no longer deceived by any of 
them save Wolcott. The purpose was the consideration of the in- 
structions that had been prepared. Some changes were made. 
Adams asked advice on certain points. At eleven o’clock the in- 
structions were unanimously approved. The Cabinet lingered, 
but Adams brought up no new subject. Out into the dark Trenton 
streets trooped the conspirators, almost hopeful. They were still 
at breakfast the next morning when orders were received from 
Adams that the instructions should be put in shape, a frigate be 
placed in readiness to receive the envoys who should sail not later 
than the first of the month. 

The conspiracy had failed and John Adams was actually 
President. 

The Jeffersonians were jubilant. Duane wrote that Adams had 
‘crossed the Rubicon,’ but that the rumor that Pickering and Wol- 
cott had resigned was groundless. ‘They will never sacrifice their 
places to squeamish feelings.’ 1 Hamilton had sought to deter the 
President, but to his honor ‘he resisted every seducement and re- 
pelled every insinuation.’ ? The Hamiltonians were either furious 
or depressed. The Southern Federalists under Marshall approved, 
as did Jay, and the ‘Centinel’ commended the act, but the men 
who had made and maintained the prestige of the Federalist Party 
were in murderous mood. The mission would succeed — they 
knew it. There would be no war, and the army would have to go. 
With that would go the instrument for keeping down insurrec- 
tions in America or for waging a war of conquest in South America. 
With one masterful effort, Adams had pulled down the pillars of 
the party temple and he could not escape in its fall. But it was the 
proudest and most masterful moment in his life, and he was con- 
tent. Long after the débdcle he was to write that he asked no 
better epitaph than the sentence that he had taken upon himself 
the responsibility of the peace with France. 


1 Aurora, October 23, 1799, 
* Ibid., October 25, 1799. 


ADAMS PULLS DOWN THE PILLARS 439 


IX 


From that moment the Federalists were a house divided against 
itself, and the cloud burst and the rain descended and beat upon 
it, and the days were dark. Dreary, indeed, that winter of 1799. 
*Porcupine’ was driven from Philadelphia, and young Fenno, dis- 
gusted, gave up his paper with a farewell address so contemptuous 
of democracy and American institutions that the wiser leaders 
trembled at his temerity. M’Kean, the Democrat, had been 
swept into the gubernatorial office. Washington had died, and 
could no longer be used to advance the party interest. Even the 
dashing Harper, clever in political fight or social frolic, had de- 
spaired of the future in politics, resigned his seat, and made ar- 
rangements to move to Baltimore as the son-in-law of Carroll of 
Carrollton.1 Duane was firing relentlessly at the scandals and 
finding flesh, and there was no ‘Porcupine’ to return the fire. The 
brilliant and audacious Charles Pinckney had appeared in the 
Senate to give a militant leadership to the Jeffersonians that the 
Federalists could not match. Into the House had come a giant, 
in John Marshall, to give to a later-day Federalism a sanity that 
came too late, but he was with Adams, not Hamilton. 

The shadows even fell on the brilliant Federalist society. 
Hamilton was there that winter, to be sure, ‘to keep the watch,’ 
as Duane put it, and through an unhappy coincidence ‘The 
Aurora’ was able to add that ‘Mrs. Reynolds, the sentimental 
heroine, was back in town. But something like tragedy had 
fallen on the Holland House of Federalism, and weeping was heard 
in the rooms once given to gayety and laughter. One night 
Marie Bingham, not sixteen, slipped out of the home of her father, 
with Count de Tilly, age forty-five, a dissolute scion of the French 
aristocracy with an eye to the Bingham fortune, and was married 
at two o'clock in the morning. The couple were found in the home 
of a French milliner in the early morning, and physicians worked 
over the brilliant Mrs. Bingham, who was in hysterics. Money 
soon dissolved the union, but the lights were never quite so bright 
thereafter in the princely mansion of the cleverest hostess in 
Philadelphia. The rain fell even upon the House of Bingham.? 

1 Aurora, July 26, August 5, 1799. § Morison, Otzs, 1, 137; McRee, Iredell, u, 571. 


CHAPTER XIX 
“THE GRAPES OF WRATH?’ 


I 


HEN Congress convened in the winter of 1799, the Fed- 

eralists thoroughly appreciated the desperation of their 
situation. The tide of public opinion was rising against them 
rapidly because of their measures, and they were divided against 
themselves. As thesun of the once brilliant party went down, there 
was one colossal figure of brilliant promise silhouetted against the 
darkening sky, but John Marshall, now a member of the House, 
was not in good odor with the Hamiltonians because of his op- 
position to the Alien and Sedition Laws. The irrepressible clash of 
contending policies and ambitions had been foreshadowed in the 
difficulties Marshall had encountered in framing a Reply to 
Adams’s Address that could command the united support of the 
party, and he had succeeded measurably by giving the Reply a 
meaningless phrasing. For a moment it seemed that Marshall 
might regain the confidence of his fellow partisans when, in a 
speech of brilliancy and force, he had demolished the flimsy case of 
the Democrats against the President in the matter of Jonathan 
Robbins. With his characteristic readiness to concede the full 
strength of an enemy, Jefferson had written Madison that in the 
debate on Robbins ‘J. Marshall [distinguished himself] greatly.’ 1 
But the Federalist cheers for their new leader were speedily turned 
to groans and hisses — and thereon hangs a tale of political infamy 
scarcely approached in audacity in American history. 

Almost two years before, when the French war hysteria was at 
its height and the Federalists were cocks of the walk, the inner 
circle of the party in the Senate met one night about the table in 
the Bingham dining-room with the more moderate senatorial 
members. To assure party solidarity on all important party 
measures, it was proposed to bind all by the votes of the majority 


1 Jefferson’s Works, x, 154-59, 


THE GRAPES OF WRATH 441 


in a party caucus. The extremists had a slight majority over the 
moderate element. Thus, for a season, the Government was, to all 
practical purposes, in the hands of a Senate oligarchy composed of 
a minority of the Senators. From the summer of 1799, the ex- 
tremists entertained no illusions as to their popularity with the 
country. The election of Jefferson seemed imminent — provided 
a way could not be found to cheat him of his victory. From that 
moment on until the hour of his final triumph by the vote of the 
House in 1801, there was not a moment when the Federalist 
leaders were not ready to adopt any method, however disreputable 
and desperate, to accomplish their purpose. In this spirit they 
conceived the wicked scheme to rob Jefferson of his victory through 
an amazing measure prescribing the mode of deciding disputed 
elections for President and Vice-President. Senator Ross of 
Pennsylvania agreed to sponsor the bill. 

Briefly and baldly, this provided that on the opening and read- 
ing of the certificates of the electoral votes in the presence of 
Congress, the papers should be turned over to a grand committee 
consisting of six members of each branch of Congress, with the 
Chief Justice as presiding officer. The members of the House and 
Senate committees should be elected by ballot. These, with the 
Chief Justice, were to go into secret session behind locked doors. 
They were to have the power to send for persons and papers, to 
pass on the qualifications of electors, and the manner in which 
they had cast their votes; to investigate charges that bribery, 
intimidation, persuasion, or force had been employed; and finally, 
to decide which votes should be counted and which cast out. This 
decision was to be final. In other words, it was a criminal scheme 
and an unconstitutional plot to steal the election. It had the sup- 
port of the great majority of the best minds in the Federalist 
Party. 

In keeping with the sinister nature of this monstrous measure, 
it was proposed to withhold it carefully from the public until the 
consummation of the crime. Happily there were members of 
Congress who did not consider themselves bound in honor to 
protect dishonor from the light, and almost immediately three 
copies of the bill found their way to the office of Duane. Two of 
these were personally delivered with permission to print and dis 


442 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


close the donors; one was mailed under cover.! The bill was im- 
mediately printed in full in ‘The Aurora’ with appropriate com- 
ments, and the conspirators were dragged into the light. “The 
new electoral council or college may be very fitly compared with 
the secret Council of Ten at Venice of old,’ wrote the editor.? Out 
of this exposure grew the proceedings culminating in the prosecu- 
tion for sedition against Duane. 

With the Federalists in control of both branches of Congress, 
it did not appear at first to matter much. The leaders of the party 
had never greatly concerned themselves with public opinion. They 
mustered their men in the Senate for a vote, leaving a discussion 
of the measure to the opposition. Behind the sorry smoke screen 
of the Duane prosecution they marched unblushingly to their 
purpose. The final protest was made by Charles Pinckney, the 
brilliant new leader of the Democrats in the Senate, in a power- 
ful constitutional argument that no one cared to meet.? ‘Equal 
in eloquence and strength of reasoning to anything ever heard 
within the walls of Congress,’ said ‘The Aurora.’ 4 He sat down. 
No one rose to reply. The question was taken on the passage of 
the bill and it passed by a strict party vote of 16 to 12. 

Meanwhile, the publicity given the rather brazen plan to steal 
the election was having its reactions on the people, and Federalist 
members of the House began to protest. There was no one in a 
more rebellious mood than Marshall, who thought the situation too 
serious to permit him to leave for home on the birth of his fifth 
child. With a more far-reaching vision and a greater respect for 
public opinion than the veteran leaders of his party, he made his 
objections audible. On the floor of the House, on the street, at 
the boarding-house, he talked boldly and incessantly against the 
measure. The Federalists were amazed, disgusted. Some of the 
leaders who appreciated his ability observed his insubordination 
with sorrow. They had doubted his ‘political judgment,’ but had 
counted on swaying him to their views because of his companion- 
able temperament. They took note of his ‘very affectionate dis- 
position,’ his attachment to pleasures, his conviviality, his seem-. 
ing ‘indolence,’ and they cultivated him on the side of his weak- 


1 Aurora, April 2, 1800. 2 Ibid., April 4, 1800. 
2 Annals, March 28, 1800. 4 April 2, 1800. 5 Beveridge, u, 453. 


THE GRAPES OF WRATH 443 


nesses. But they found him a difficult psychological problem. He 
had a timidity due to his tendency to ‘feel the public pulse,’ was 
disposed to ‘erotic refinement,’ and, worse still, to ‘express great 
respect for the sovereign people.’ With all this he possessed a 
persuasive power that worked with fatal effect on ‘more feeble 
minds,’ and he was exerting this power among the members with 
disastrous results. 

Theodore Sedgwick, ponderous and pompous, and in politics 
insinuating, was apparently delegated to coax Marshall into the 
conspiracy. A number of heart-to-heart talks with the rebel 
followed. The Virginian doubted the constitutional ‘power of the 
legislature to delegate such authority to a Committee.’ After a 
long talk he “confessed himself... to be convinced,’ but shifted, 
according to Sedgwick, to the ground that the people had author- 
ized the members to decide, each for himself, in the case of election 
disputes. In its nature this power was ‘too delicate to be dele- 
gated.’ ‘To Sedgwick this was ‘so attenuated and unsubstantial’ 
as to be beyond his comprehension, and Marshall was persuaded 
to abandon this ground too. But ‘in the meantime he had dwelt 
so much in conversation on these subjects that he had dissipated 
our majority,’ Sedgwick wrote King.! 

When the discussions opened in the House, Marshall questioned 
the propriety of the Senate naming the chairman of the committee 
and of making the decision final, and offered an amendment.? 
This was followed by other amendments and ultimately by the 
revamping of the whole measure. The Senate refused to accept 
the amendments, and thus the measure died between the two 
houses. Duane was jubilant. Here was evidence of the value of a 
free press. The ‘odious bill was introduced for party purposes,’ 
and a party in the Senate ‘sought to overwhelm by terror and op- 
pression the men who dared to publish the bill, which even after 
numerous amendments was found too abominable to be coun- 
tenanced by the House of Representatives.’ The Federalists 
were downcast and indignant. Senator Tracy, who had no po- 
litical scruples, declared that ‘Marshall has spoiled all the fair 
hopes founded on Mr. Ross’s bill.’ Thus Marshall saved the 


1 King’s Works, m1, 237-38. 
? The nature of the amendment is not disclosed in the Annals, April 16, 1800, 
® Aurora, April 28, 1800. . 4 Ibid., April 30, 1800. 


4.44 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


country from revolution and Jefferson from defeat regardless of 
the vote — as Hamilton was to save him later. - 


II 

The campaign was now on, but from this time we shall hear little 
of the activities of Jefferson. His work was done. Back to his be- 
loved hilltop he hurried on the adjournment of Congress, and there 
he remained, apparently less concerned with politics than with 
potatoes. But he had already created the machinery, trained the 
mechanicians, supplied the munitions of victory, found means for 
financing the enterprise — and he left the work with his lieu- 
tenants. a 

In the leadership of his party Jefferson had no rival, and he was 
the idol of his followers, ‘the people’s friend.’ The persecution he 
had met had but endeared him more to his supporters. He was 
their Messiah. On New Year’s Eve in 1799, a company of Demo- 
crats spent the evening in conversation and songs until the new 
year came. Then, headed by a regimental band, they marched 
through the dark streets of Philadelphia, past the homes of the 
rich and fashionable blazing with light, to pay their respects to 
Jefferson at his lodgings. On the way, they encountered another 
large group, who, unknown to the first, had conceived the same 
plan for declaring their allegiance. The two crowds fraternized 
and marched on together. With cheers and shouts they summoned 
their leader to the door. When the tall, familiar figure appeared, 
the welkin rang, the band played, and a song, written for the occa- 
sion, was sung.! The incident is significant of the common recog- 
nition of Jefferson’s leadership. 

During the two preceding years the consummate political genius 
of Jefferson had been planning the programme for the struggle of 
1800. The congressional strategy of his party had been his work, 
and night after night he had gathered his lieutenants about him at 
the dinner table of the Indian Queen and given his orders for the 
morrow. If the party platform had not then been conceived, he 
had his programme, which met the purpose. Writing Madison in 
January, 1799, he proposed that all possible emphasis be put upon 
the Alien and Sedition Laws, the direct tax, the army and navy, 

1 Aurora, January 2, 1799. 


THE GRAPES OF WRATH 445 


‘the usurious loan to set these follies on foot,’ and on the picture 
of ‘recruiting officers lounging at every court-house and decoying 
the laborer from his plough.’! About the same time he was ex- 
panding this programme in a letter to Gerry: The constitutional 
rights of the States should be asserted. The right of Congress to 
‘its constitutional share in the division of power’ should be main- 
tained. The Government should be ‘rigorously frugal’ and all 
possible savings should be applied to the discharge of the public 
debt. The multiplication of offices should be stopped. A standing 
army in time of peace should be attacked. Free commerce should 
be maintained with all nations, and there should be ‘political 
connections with none.’ The liberty of speech and the freedom of 
the press should be preserved.? * 

That same month he was writing Edmund Pendleton in the 
same vein — the ‘direct tax,’ the ‘army and navy in time of 
peace,’ the ‘usurious interest,’ the ‘recruiting officers at every 
court-house to decoy the laborer from his plough.’* In these 
letters we have the first Jeffersonian platform — and on these 
points, from that time on, the Democrats harped constantly in 
Congress, in pamphlets and through the press. Not least, nor 
least effective, among the methods of propaganda were the con- 
gressional letters with which the Jeffersonian members flooded 
their constituents, setting forth in vigorous fashion all the counts 
in the indictment. As these letters fell upon the country like a 
snowstorm, the Federalists were infuriated. They summoned their 
Federal Judges to denounce them in charges to grand juries, and 
Iredell foolishly responded. In Congress they hinted darkly that 
these records of public affairs sent by public servants to the public 
they served were seditious. Many years afterward Adams recalled 
them with rage — these letters that ‘swelled, raged, foamed in all 
the fury of a tempest at sea against me,’ a flood so enormous that 
‘a collection of those letters would make many volumes.’ Adams 
never forgave his party for finding no means for their suppression.‘ 

These letters were part of the Jeffersonian plan to reach the 
people and set the tongues to wagging. Everywhere Jefferson was 
encouraging his followers to establish newspapers. Soon Noah 


1 Jefferson’s Works, x, 70-74, 2 [bid., 74, 8 Ibid., 89-92, 
4 Adams, Works, x, 116-19. 


446 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Webster’s paper was complaining that the irrepressible Matthew 
Lyon ‘in the course of one year has established no less than four 
...presses.”! Was money needed for the publication of pam- 
phlets or the distribution of newspapers? Jefferson made out a sub- 
scription list, put his friends down for a contribution, and informed 
them of his action without apology. Thus, to Monroe: An im- 
portant measure is under contemplation which ‘will require a 
considerable sum of money.’ He had therefore put Monroe down 
for from fifty to a hundred dollars.2 Thus, to Madison: ‘Every 
man must lay his pen and his purse under contribution.’ ? Were 
articles required? He sent instructions to his friends to write. 
Thus, to Pendleton, asking him to prepare a pamphlet on the 
Gerry correspondence,‘ and to Madison asking him to ‘set aside 
a portion of every post day to write what may be proper for the 
public.’> Were pamphlets printed and ready for distribution? 
Then a letter from Jefferson to men of the standing of Monroe 
ordering them to place them in the hands of ‘the most influential 
characters among our countrymen who are only misled.’ ® 

In every State he had men of political sagacity through whom 
he could work while maintaining the semblance of aloofness. In 
Massachusetts, Gerry; in New Hampshire, Langdon; in Connecti- 
cut, Bishop and Granger; in New York, Livingston and Burr; in 
Pennsylvania, Gallatin, M’Kean, and the Muhlenbergs; in Mary- 
land, Mercer and General Sam Smith; in Virginia, Madison, Mon- 
roe, Giles, and Pendleton; in Kentucky, John Breckenridge and 
George Nicholson; in North Carolina, Macon, Jones, and Joseph 
Gales, the clever and daring editor of the Raleigh ‘Register’ who 
put the Federalists to the torture with the best paper in the State, 
which was sent free to prospective converts;’ and in Tennessee, 
Senator William Cocke, an old Amelia County Virginian, and 
William C. C. Claiborne. In South Carolina, where the Hamil- 
tonians were strong in the support of the Pinckney brothers, and 
through the commercial interests of Charleston, he was fortunate 
in having Charles Pinckney, more brilliant, daring, picturesque, 
and magnetic than his cousins, and Peter Freneau, brother of the 


1 Commercial Advertiser, February 13, 1800. 2 Randall, u, 470. 
8 Jefferson’s Works, x, 95-97, ' 4 Thid., 86-89. 
6 Jbid., 95-97. 6 [bid., 97-99. 7 Dodd, Macon, 157-59. 


THE GRAPES OF WRATH 447 


poet, and editor of the ‘Charleston City News.’ Nowhere did the 
Jefiersonians make better progress against stubborn resistance 
than in the Palmetto State. Thence Hamilton had long drawn 
for talent, but his party was being gradually undermined. William 
Smith, who recited speeches Hamilton had written, had retired to 
escape defeat to a berth in Lisbon; and Harper, noting the pre- 
monitions of a storm, had announced his retirement from Congress 
to seek consolation in the glamour of the Carroll wealth and in the 
charms of a Carroll daughter in Maryland. 

This revolution was largely wrought through the management 
of a few Jeffersonians who met night after night in Freneau’s 
office on George Street to plan the fight. Either of two partici- 
pants in these conferences was a host within himself. There was 
Freneau — huge in frame, and, aside from height, bearing a strik- 
ing resemblance to Charles James Fox in voice, conversation, and 
manners, with a literary style which a contemporary found to 
combine ‘the beauty and smoothness of Addison and the strength 
and simplicity of Cobbett.? And there was Charles Pinckney, 
handsome, imposing, a favorite of fortune, dominating in leader- 
ship, eloquent and forceful in debate, conspicuous in the Constitu- 
tional Convention in his twenties and Governor of his State at 
thirty-one. There about the table, and over their cups we may be 
sure, they set their traps, and planned their propaganda. Freneau 
would take up his pen and literally dash off a powerful article with 
a facility and felicity that called for no revision or correction; and 
Pinckney would write an article to be signed “A Republican,’ or 
appear unexpectedly at a public meeting to sweep the audience 
with him by the fire and force of his eloquence.! These men sallied 
forth to battle with a gallant gayety suggested by their own face- 
tious description of their conferences as ‘The Rye House Plot.’ 

Thus everywhere Jefferson had men on whom he could depend, 
and his orders given, his work done, he could spend the summer 
and autumn of 1800 with his potatoes. There we must leave him 
and look elsewhere for the drama of the fighting. Only twice 
during the campaign did he wander farther from Monticello than 
Charlottesville. Mounted on his horse, he rode daily over his 
plantation. Every evening he made his customary notations in his 

1 Thomas, Reminiscences, u, 54-56. 


4.48 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


farm account book. When Marie’s pianoforte arrived, he might 
have been seen tuning it himself while the battle raged on many 
fronts. He wrote his daughter the details of a neighborhood mur- 
der, and of the prospects of the harvest, but nothing of politics. 
His work was done. He had ploughed and sowed and tended — 
but the work in the harvest-field was for others. In the early sum- 
mer a strange tale traveled throughout the country, recorded in all 
the papers, that he had died suddenly. The papers printed it 
cautiously, however, and there was no political motive in its 
circulation. At length it was explained. One of his slaves named 
‘Thomas Jefferson’ had died at Monticello. Jefferson was never 
more alive than that summer on his hilltop. 


III 


That a tidal wave toward Democracy had set in was shown in 
the early spring in the elections in New York, Massachusetts, and 
New Hampshire. By common consent New York was put down 
as the pivotal State and both parties planned to put forth their 
utmost efforts there. Jefferson, still in Philadelphia, was keeping 
in intimate touch with the situation through his correspondents in 
the State, and placing reliance on the sagacity of Aaron Burr. As 
early as January, he was writing Monroe with the utmost con- 
fidence of the result ‘on the strength of [his] advices.’ In March 
he was assuring Madison, on the representations of Burr and 
Livingston, that the State was safe if the city of New York could 
be carried.? The Federalists, he found seriously alarmed. ‘Their 
speeches in private, as well as their public and private demeanor 
toward me, indicate it strongly.’ ? Hamilton himself had seemed 
so depressed that Henry Lee had written rallying him on his pes- 
simism and urging him to ‘be more like yourself and resist to 
victory all your foes.’ 4 He had replied with a touch of petulance 
that he was not despondent and stood ‘on ground which, sooner or 
later, will assure me a triumph over all my enemies.’ > But he was 
then facing the most desperate fighting of his career, with Burr 
leading the opposition with a smiling gayety that was disconcert- 
ing. 


1 Jefferson’s Works, x, 134-86, | 2 Tbid., 154-59. > 8 Ibid. 
¢ Randall, u, 538, ® Hamilton’s Works, x, 363, 


THE GRAPES OF WRATH 449 


The prevailing fashion of picturing Hamilton as a saintly soul 
sent to his death by a deep-dyed villain of the type once popular 
in the melodrama, cannot conceal the amazing resemblance of 
these two men. There were probably no other two men in the 
America of their day who were so much alike. Physically both 
were small, compactly built, of militant carriage, with penetrating 
eyes of different colors, and of persuasive voices. Both were 
dandies in their dress, the glass of fashion and the mould of form, 
courtly, Chesterfieldian, and dashing. Both had demonstrated 
their courage and military sagacity on the field of battle — Hamil- 
ton in the assault at Yorktown, Burr in carrying his beloved 
Montgomery from the battle-field on his back, wading knee-deep 
In snow, and amidst a rain of bullets. Burr, no less than Hamilton, 
had served in the military household of Washington, and both 
alike had resented their leader’s rather imperious manner. At the 
New York Bar both had risen to eminence, and some hesitated to 
give the superiority to either. Here their methods were different 
— Hamilton relying on erudition where Burr depended on finesse, 
the former exhaustive in argument, the latter concise. Both were 
effective orators in different ways. Hamilton was declamatory, 
Burr conversational. Socially they had many points of similarity, 
and in a social sense they were not averse to one another’s com- 
pany at dinner. In conversation one was scarcely more scintil- 
lating than the other, and both were fond of badinage, and adept 
in compliments to the ladies. Both were gallants, attractive to, 
and attracted by, women of wit and beauty. Neither was above the 
intrigues of love, with ideas of morality that would have been ap- 
preciated in the London of the Restoration. If Burr kept his diary, 
which seems so shocking to some, Hamilton had his pamphlet on 
his affair with Mrs. Reynolds — but Burr did not publish his 
diary. Neither should be judged too harshly, for it was a day of 
rather loose morals, and the press made free with the gossip con- 
cerning Harper and Sedgwick. Both were inordinately ambitious 
for command, impatient under restraint, and wont to dream of 
leading triumphant armies. The ambition of neither was circum- 
scribed by the boundaries of the country. If Burr wished to lead 
an army of conquest into Mexico, Hamilton longed to lead the 
same sort of an army into South America. 


450 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Hamilton and Burr were natural enemies because too much 
alike in temperament and ambition. Their hopes clashed. Both 
were deeply in love with their wives, notwithstanding their trans- 
gressions. There is something touching in Burr’s letters to his 
sick wife, his anxiety, his consultations with physicians, his in- 
structions to Theodosia. He was idolized by wife and daughter 
because they, in turn, were idolized by him. Unlike Hamilton, 
he was even tender with his servants. It is quite impossible to 
conceive of Hamilton writing friendly letters to his men and 
women domestics and slaves. To understand Burr’s fascination 
for many, one thing must be borne in mind — he was loved be- 
cause he was lovable in his personal contacts. 

These two men faced each other for a finish fight in the spring 
of 1800.! 


IV 


In the early spring the surface indications were not favorable 
for a Jeffersonian victory in the election that was to determine the 
political complexion of the Legislature that would select the pres- 
idential electors. The Federalists were seemingly entrenched. 
Behind them, victories. Hamilton was openly active, Burr watch- 
ful like a cat. One of the latter’s closest lieutenants wrote Gallatin 
of the situation developing in March. ‘The Federalists have had 
a meeting and determined on their Senators; they have also ap- 
pointed a committee to nominate suitable characters for the 
Assembly. ... Mr. Hamilton is very busy, more so than usual, 
and no exertions will be wanting on his part. Fortunately Mr. 
Hamilton will have at this election a most powerful opponent in 
Colonel Burr. This gentleman is exceedingly active; it is his 
opinion that the Republicans had better not publish a ticket or 
call a meeting until the Federalists have completed theirs. Mr. 
Burr is arranging matters in such a way as to bring into operation 
all the Republican interests.’ ? 

The purpose of Hamilton was twofold — to elect the Federalist 
electors, and to elect only such electors as he could control against 


1 Parton, Life and Times of Aaron Burr; Davis, Memoirs of Aaron Burr; Familiar Letters, 
237; Oliver, Hamilton; Bradford, Damaged Souls. 
2 Adams, Gallatin (Matthew L. Davis to Gallatin), 232-34, 


THE GRAPES OF WRATH 451 


Adams. With this in view he called a secret caucus composed of 
his most pliant followers. Preferring tools to men of independence 
and capacity, the caucus selected men of no popularity and little 
weight. Burr, who had an incomparable system of espionage in 
this campaign, was instantly put in possession of the ticket. The 
brilliant black eyes of the little politician hastily and gravely 
scanned the list. Then, folding it and placing it in his pocket, he 
murmured, ‘Now I have him hollow!’! Meanwhile, Burr had 
been busily engaged in the creation of a powerful, compact 
organization. Like most brilliant men of ingratiating manners, 
he had drawn about him a formidable array of the young men of 
the city prepared to execute any orders he might give. This was 
his purely personal following. He found the backbone of his 
organization in Tammany. 

The potentialities of that organization, composed, for the most 
part, of men in the ordinary walks of life, the poor, the unimpor- 
tant, he had instantly sensed. They were democrats by instinct. 
Their Wigwam, a one-story frame building, was so unprepossessing 
that the Federalists dubbed it ‘The Pig Pen’ — but that did not 
bother Burr. These men had votes, and influence among others 
of their kind who had votes. They met night after night to smoke 
their pipes and drink their ale, to tell stories and talk politics. It 
is not of record that Burr ever entered the Wigwam, but he was 
the Tammany boss notwithstanding, operating through his friends 
who were the ostensible leaders. It was he, seated in his law office, 
who moulded the policies. His suggestions whipped it into shape 
as a fighting political organization.? For weeks his home had been 
crowded night after night with the most daring, adventurous, and 
ardent members of his party. Most of them were young, fit, and 
eager for any enterprise. Because there had been factions in the 
party, he laid down the law on these occasions that personalities 
should not be discussed or mentioned. These were to be sub- 
merged for the campaign. Local considerations were to be ignored. 
Discipline was to be maintained. Compromises necessary to 
solidarity were to be effected. The all-important thing was to 
amalgamate every section of the party and appeal to the people 
through a ticket notably superior to that of the Federalists. 

1 Parton, Burr, 1, 247. 3 Myers, Tammany Hall, 12, 


452 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


With the audacity of genius he determined that General 
Horatio Gates should be a candidate for the Assembly. More 
daring still, that the venerable George Clinton, many times Gov- 
ernor, should stand, and that Brockholst Livingston, eminent as 
patriot and lawyer, should run. Samuel Osgood, a former member 
of Congress, and Washington’s Postmaster-General, was slated. 
It was easy to put them down — the problem was to persuade 
them to accept. Here Burr’s genius for leadership counted heavily. 
Time and again he labored without avail on Clinton, Gates, and 
Livingston. At length Livingston agreed to stand provided both 
Clinton and Gates would run. Straightway, Burr rushed to Gates. 
It was a hard struggle. Burr pleaded, cajoled, flattered, appealed 
to party pride. Finally Gates agreed to run if Clinton would make 
the race. And there Burr almost met his Waterloo. The rugged 
old war-horse was prejudiced against Jefferson. He had ambitions 
for the Presidency himself, and they had been passed over. Burr 
left the matter open, smiled, flattered, bowed, departed. Then, 
out from his office committees began to make their way to Clinton 
with importunities to stand. The personal friends of the stubborn 
old man were sent to persuade him. He was adamant. A scene at 
Burr’s home at Richmond Hill: Present, the nominating com- 
mittee and Clinton. A mass movement on Clinton — he would 
not budge. Then Burr’s master-stroke. A community had a right 
to draft a man in a crisis — the crisis was at hand. Without his 
consent they would nominate him. The rebellious veteran, flat- 
tered, agreed not to repudiate the nomination. The victory was 
Burr’s — and Jefferson’s. 

A little later, the press announced that a meeting of the Demo- 
crats had been held at the home of J. Adams, Jr., at 68 William 
Street, where the Assembly ticket had been put up. Spirited reso- 
lutions were adopted. The enthusiasm of the Jeffersonians reached 
fever heat. Hamilton and the Federalists were paralyzed with 
amazement. The impossible had happened. Against Hamilton’s 
mediocre tools — this ticket, composed of commanding figures of 
national repute! ! Immediately the frantic fears of the Federalists 
were manifest in the efforts of ‘Portius’ in the ‘Commercial Ad- 
vertiser’ to frighten the party into action. Jefferson had become a 

1 Commercial Advertiser, April 26, 1800. 


THE GRAPES OF WRATH 453 


possibility — the author of the Mazzei letter! Clinton and Gates 
candidates for the Assembly! Old men laden with honors who had 
retired, in harness again! Clearly no office lured them — it must 
be the magnitude of the issue. And who were Clinton, Gates, and 
Osgood? Enemies of the Constitution! To your tents, O Federal- 
ists!’ A few days later the merchants met at the Tontine Coffee- 
House to endorse the Hamiltonian ticket because ‘the election is 
peculiarly important to the mercantile interests.’? In the ‘Pig 
Pen’ the Tammanyites read of the action of the merchants, clicked 
their glasses, and rejoiced. Hamilton, now thoroughly alarmed, 
redoubled his efforts. The Federalist press began to teem with 
hysterical attacks on Jefferson, Madison, and Clinton — men who 
were planning the destruction of the Government.? | 
Meanwhile, Burr, calm, confident, suave, silent, was giving 
New York City its first example of practical politics. Money was 
needed — he formed a finance committee to collect funds. Solici- 
tors went forth to wealthy members of the party to demand certain 
amounts — determined upon by Burr. It was a master psycho- 
logist who scanned the subscription lists. One parsimonious rich 


man was down for one hundred dollars. 


‘Strike his name off,’ said Burr. ‘You will not get the money 
and... his exertions will cease and you will not see him at the 
polls.’ 

Another name — that of a lazy man liberal with donations. 
‘Double the amount and tell him no labor will be expected of 
him.’ 

With infinite care Burr card-indexed every voter in the city, his 
political history, his present disposition, his temperament, his 
habits, his state of health, the exertions probably necessary to get 
him to the polls. The people had to be aroused — Burr organized 
precinct and ward meetings, sent speakers, addressed them him- 
self. And while Burr was working, the lowliest too were working 
on the lowliest. One evening ‘a large corpulent person with some- 
thing of the appearance of Sir John Falstaff’ was seen in the lobby 
of a theater “haranguing an old black man who sells peanuts and 
apples to come forward and vote the Republican ticket.’ 


1 Commercial Advertiser, July 26, 1800. * Ibid., April 29, 1800. 
8 Ibid, 


454 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


‘You pay heavy taxes this year.’ 

‘Yes, Massa, me pay ten dollars.’ 

‘Well, if you vote the Republican ticket you will have little or 
no taxes to pay next year; for if we Republicans succeed, the stand- 
ing army will be disbanded, which cost us almost a million of money 
last year.’ | 

The peanut vendor promised to appear at the polls ‘with six 
more free-born sons of the African race.’ 1 Whereupon the cam- 
paigner had a tale to tell to the boys at the Wigwam that night. 

The polls opened on April 29th and closed at sunset on May 2d. 
Days of intense ceaseless activity. Hamilton and Burr took the 
field. From one polling-place to another they rushed to harangue 
the voters. When they met, they treated each other with courtly 
courtesy. Handbills were put out, flooding the city during the 
voting. In the midst of the fight Matthew L. Davis found time at 
midnight to send a hasty report to Gallatin in Philadelphia. ‘This 
day he [Burr] has remained at the polls of the Seventh ward ten 
hours without intermission. Pardon this hasty scrawl. I have not 
ate for fifteen hours.’ 2 The result was a sweeping triumph for the 
Democrats. When the news reached the Senate at Philadelphia, 
the Federalists were so depressed and the Democrats so jubilant 
that the transaction of business was impossible, and it adjourned.’ 

Hamilton was stunned, and ready for trickery to retrieve the 

lost battle. The next night he was presiding over a secret meeting 
of Federalists where it was agreed to ask Governor Jay to call an 
extra session of the Legislature to deprive that body of the power 
to choose electors. Hamilton approached Jay in a letter. ‘In 
times like these,’ he wrote, ‘it will not do to be over-scrupulous.’ 
There should be no objections to ‘taking of legal and constitu- 
tional steps to prevent an atheist in religion and a fanatic in 
politics from getting possession of the helm of state.’* Jay read 
the letter with astonishment, made a notation that it was a plan 
to serve a party purpose, and buried it in the archives. It was the 
blackest blot on Hamilton’s record. 

That victory elected Jefferson. 

It destroyed Hamilton — and it made Burr Vice-President. 


1 Commercial Advertiser, April 29, 1800. 2 Adams, Gallatin, 237-38. 
8 Adams, Gallatin (to his wife), 240-41. 4 Hamilton’s Works, x, 371. 


THE GRAPES OF WRATH 455 


Searcely had the polls closed when Burr’s friends, giving him 
the whole credit, as he deserved, began to urge on the leaders in 
Philadelphia his selection for the Vice-Presidency. Davis wrote 
Gallatin that the Democrats of New York were bent on Burr.! 
Admiral James Nicholas, the father-in-law of Gallatin, wrote that 
the triumph was a miraculous ‘intervention of Supreme Power 
and our friend Burr, the agent.’ It was his ‘generalship, persever- 
ance, industry, and execution’ that did it, and he deserved ‘any- 
thing and everything of his country.’ He had won ‘at the risk of 
his life”? On May 12th Gallatin wrote his wife: ‘We had last 
night a very large meeting of Republicans, in which it was unan- 
imously agreed to support Burr for Vice-President.’ 

That was a bitter month for the Federalists. In the guberna- 
torial contests in New Hampshire and Massachusetts the Demo- 
crats had polled an astonishing vote. Painfully labored were the 
efforts of the Federalist press to explain these remarkable acces- 
sions. The ‘Centinel’ in Boston had previously sounded a note of 
warning under the caption, ‘Americans, Why Sleep Ye?’ The 
Democrats, it said, were ‘organized, officered, accoutered, pro- 
vided, and regularly paid.’ They were ‘systematized in all points.’ 
In Pennsylvania a Jeffersonian Governor had thrown Federalist 
office-holders “headlong from their posts.’ In New Hampshire 
the Democrats were fighting ‘under cover of an ambuscade.’ In 
all States new Jeffersonian presses were established, ‘from Ports- 
mouth in New Hampshire to Savannah in Georgia,’ through 
which ‘the orders of Generals of the faction are transmitted with 
professional punctuality; which presses serve as a sounding board 
to the notes that issue through that great speaking trumpet of the 
Devil, the Philadelphia Aurora.’ Did not Duane get the enormous 
salary of eight hundred dollars a year? ‘Why Sleep Ye?’ 

Dismayed, disgruntled with Adams, but afraid to reject him 
openly, the Federalist caucus convened in Philadelphia and se- 
lected Charles Cotesworth Pinckney as his running mate with the 
idea of electing him to the Presidency through treachery to Adams. 


Vv 
When Adams learned of the Federalist defeat in New York, he 
momentarily went to pieces. His suspicious mind instantly saw 
1 Adams, Gallatin, 238-40. 3 Jbid., 241. 


456 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


in his humiliation’ the hand of Hamilton and his supporters. He 
had long been cognizant of the treachery about him, in his official 
household. On the morning of May 5th, McHenry received a note 
from the house on Market Street: ‘The President requests Mr. 
McHenry’s company for one minute.’ As the poet-politician 
walked up Market Street in response that spring morning, he could 
not have conceived of any other issue than a brief discussion of 
some departmental matter. Only a few weeks before he had, with 
Adams’s knowledge, arranged for a house at Georgetown, and for 
the removal of his family thither.! As he had surmised, the subject 
which had summoned him to the conference was a minor matter 
relating to the appointment of a purveyor. This was satisfactorily 
disposed of. Was there something smug or offensive in the manner 
of Hamilton’s messenger that suddenly enraged the old man, 
smarting under the sting of the defeat in New York? Suddenly he 
began to talk of McHenry’s derelictions, his anger rising, his color 
mounting, his voice ringing with unrepressed rage. McHenry 
thought him ‘mad.’ Washington, said Adams, had saddled him 
with three Secretaries, Pickering, Wolcott, and McHenry. The 
latter had refused to give a commission to the only elector in 
North Carolina who had voted for Adams. He had influenced 
Washington to insist on giving Hamilton the preference over 
Knox — which was true. In a report to Congress, McHenry had 
eulogized Washington and sought to praise Hamilton — the Presi- 
dent’s enemy. He had urged the suspension of the mission to 
France. The old man was spluttering with fury, and his disloyal 
Secretary was dumb with amazement. It was time for him to 
resign. McHenry beat a hasty retreat, returned to his office, 
prepared his resignation, which in decency should have been 
voluntarily submitted long before, and sent it in the next 
morning.” 

Having set himself to the task of ridding his household of his 
enemies, Adams bethought himself of Pickering. Five days after 
the stormy scene with McHenry, the austere Secretary of State 
recelved a note from the President inviting a resignation. This 
was on Saturday. On Monday morning, Pickering went to his 


1 Gibbs (McHenry to his brother), m, 246-48, 
2 Gibbs, u1, 246-48; Steiner, 454, 


THE GRAPES OF WRATH 457 


office as usual, having been long accustomed to ignoring or thwart- 
ing the wishes of his chief, and sent a letter dealing, strangely 
enough, with his pecuniary embarrassments, and refusing to re- 
sign.’ The letter had not been sent an hour before an answer was 
in his hands. It was curt and comprehensive. ‘Divers causes and 
considerations essential to the administration of the government, 
in my judgment requiring a change in the department of state, you 
are hereby discharged from any further service as Secretary of 
State.’ ? 

Hamilton, enraged at the dismissal of his servitors, hastened an 
astonishing letter of instructions to Pickering. He should ‘take 
copies and extracts of all such documents as will enable you to ex- 
plain both Jefferson and Adams.’ No doubt Pickering was ‘aware 
of a very curious journal of the latter when he was in Europe — a 
tissue of weakness and vanity.’ The time was coming when ‘men 
of real integrity and energy must write against all empirics.’? To 
McHenry he wrote that ‘a new and more dangerous era has com- 
menced’; that ‘Revolution and a new order of things are avowed 
in this quarter’; and, with something of Adams’s hysteria, that 
“property, liberty, and even life are at stake.’ 4 

The news that Adams had rid himself of his betrayers, and found 
in John Marshall and Samuel Dexter as successors men incapable 
of treachery, made a profound impression. To Duane of ‘The 
Aurora.’ it was a vindication. Two months before he had divided 
the Cabinet into Hamiltonians and Adamsites, with Pickering 
and McHenry bearing the brand of Hamilton.’ Announcing the 
dismissals under the caption, ‘The Hydra Dying,’ he described 
Pickering as ‘an uncommon instance of the mischiefs that may be 
done in a country by small and contemptible talents and a narrow 
mind when set on fire by malignity.’ ® The Federalist papers were 
hard put to sugar-coat the pill. The ‘Centinel’ cautiously said 
that ‘the best men here have variant opinions on the measure’ of 
Pickering’s dismissal.’ Three days later, it rushed to the defense 
of the humiliated representative of the Essex Junto with the com- 
ment that the best eulogy on his official conduct was ‘the chuckling 


1 Pickering, 11, 487, 2 Ibid., m1, 488. 3 Hamilton’s Works, x, 376. 
4 Steiner, 457. 5 Aurora, March 6, 1800. 6 Aurora, May 9, 1800. 
7 Centinel, May 21, 1800. 


458 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


of the Jacobins cver his removal’ and the assurance that he car- 
ried into retirement ‘the regrets of all good men.’! The Essex 
Junto made no attempt to conceal their disgust. Cabot, Ames, 
Gore, and Pickering were soon sending their versions to Rufus 
King in London. ‘You are so well acquainted with the sort of sensi- 
bility for which our chief is remarkable, that you will be less sur- 
prised than most men,’ wrote Cabot.? Gore wrote that the dis- 
missal ‘produces general discontent.’ ? The delicate moral sensi- . 
bilities of all these politicians were much hurt because Adams had 
fallen into the habit of swearing and using ‘billingsgate.’ 4 He was 
even speaking with bitterness of the Essex Junto and the British 
faction, quite in the manner of Jefferson. It was even ‘understood’ 
among the Hamiltonians that the dismissals were the price of the 
alliance which had been formed between Jefferson and Adams. ° 
But Adams knew what he was about. He knew that a plan had 
been made to trick him out of his reélection. The scheme was bald, 
bold, stupid. All the Federalist electors in the North would be 
urged to vote for Adams and Pinckney; in the South enough would 
be asked to vote for Pinckney, and not Adams, to bring the Hamil- 
tonian Carolinian in ahead. Hamilton was writing frankly to his 
friends in this vein, ready to ‘pursue Pinckney as my single ob- 
ject’;® while Gore was writing King that ‘the intention of the Fed- 
eralists is to run General Pinckney and Mr. Adams as President and 
Vice-President.’ 7 When, in July, Adams appeared in Boston at a 
dinner and toasted Sam Adams and John Hancock, the much- 
abused Jeffersonians, as ‘the proscribed patriots,’ the Hamiltonians 
groaned their disgust and the Democrats shouted with glee. ‘This 
was well understood by the Jacobins whom it will not gain,’ wrote 
Ames.® “The Aurora’ observed that ‘he did not give the great orb 
[Franklin] around which he moved as a satellite.’ ® The rupture 
was now complete. When Adams was permitted to leave Philadel- 
phia without a demonstration the latter part of May, ‘The Aurora’ 
was unseemly in its mirth. ‘Did the Blues parade? No? What — 


1 Centinel, May 24, 1800. 2 King’s Works, ut, 249. 3 Jbid., 250. 

‘ King’s Works (from Pickering), 262-63; (Ames to King), 275-76; (Goodhue to Pickers 
ing), 243-44. 

5 Ibid. (from Pickering), 248; (from Cabot), 249. 

6 Hamilton’s Works (to Sedgwick), x, 375-76. . 

7 King’s Works, 1, 250. 8 Tbid., 275-76. ® Aurora, July 17, 1800. 


THE GRAPES OF WRATH 459 


not parade to salute him “whom the people delight to honor” — 
“the rock on which the storm beats ” — the ‘‘chief who now com- 
mands’? Did not the officers of the standing army or the marines 
parade? The new army officers are not fond of the President; he 
has dismissed Timothy.’ ?! 

Meanwhile, the most consummate of the betrayers, Wolcott, 
unsuspected still, remained within the fort to signal to Hamilton. 


VI 


It was common knowledge early in the spring that Hamilton 
would exert his ingenuity to defeat Adams by hook or crook. 
‘The Aurora’ declared, March 12th, that ‘the party with Alex- 
ander Hamilton at their head have determined to defeat Adams in 
the approaching elections.’ The watchful eye of the suspicious 
Adams, who felt the treachery, unquestionably read the article 
and heard the gossip. When, after the death of Washington, the 
Cincinnati met in New York to select Hamilton as the head of the 
order, Adams was informed that his enemy had electioneered 
against him among the members. He heard particularly of the 
action of ‘the learned and pious Doctors Dwight and Babcock, 
who... were attending as two reverend knights of the order, with 
their blue ribbons and bright eagles at their sable button-holes,’ in 
saying repeatedly in the room where the society met, ‘We must 
sacrifice Adams,’ ‘We must sacrifice Adams.’ 

Thus, when in June, Hamilton, under the pretext of disbanding 
the army in person, fared forth in his carriage on a tour of the New 
England States, no one doubted the political character of his mis- 
sion. His purpose was to prevail upon the leaders to give unani- 
mous support to Pinckney and to drop a few Adams votes, or, that 
impossible, to give Pinckney the same support as Adams. The 
records of this dramatic journey are meager enough. It is known 
that in New Hampshire he talked with Governor Gilman, who was 
the popular leader, and ‘took pains’ to impress upon him ‘the 
errors and the defects of Mr. Adams and of the danger that 
candidate cannot prevail by mere Federal strength.’ He urged sup- 
port of Pinckney on the ground that in the South he would get 
some anti-Federal votes.? In Rhode Island he evidently encoun- 

1 Aurora, June 7, 1800, : 8 Hamilton’s Works (to Bayard), x, 384-87, 


460 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


tered a spirited protest from Governor Fenner. The Governor 
expressed the hope that all the electors would be Federalists, but 
clearly gave no encouragement to the Pinckney candidacy, ac- 
cording to Hamilton’s own version of the conference.! There were 
other versions, however, indicative of a stormy interview. ‘The 
‘Albany Register’ advised Hamilton, in giving the story of his 
tour to the ‘Anglo-Federal party which wishes to make Charles C. 
Pinckney President,’ to ‘forget his interview with the Governor of 
Rhode Island.’ ? ‘The Aurora’ followed in a few days with a more 
circumstantial story. Hamilton had ‘warmly pressed Governor 
Fenner to support Pinckney’ and ‘the old Governor’s eyes were 
opened and he literally drove the gallant Alexander out of the 
door.’ 3 iy 

But in Massachusetts, albeit the home of Adams, Hamilton 
could count upon a cordial reception for his views, since it was also 
the home of the Essex Junto. This was composed of the Big-Wigs 
of the party in that State, all ardently devoted to Hamilton, shar- 
ing in his hate of democracy and doubt of the Republic. For years 
these men had met at one another’s homes and directed the politics 
of Massachusetts. They were men of intellect and social prestige, 
intimately allied with commerce and the law. There was George 
Cabot, the greatest and wisest of them all, and one of the few men 
who dared tell Hamilton his faults. He was a man of fine appear- 
ance, tall, well-moulded, elegant in his manners, aristocratic in his 
bearing, earnest but never vehement in conversation; a man of 
wealth, and a merchant.‘ There was Fisher Ames, brilliant, viva- 
cious, smiling, cynical, eloquent, exclusive in his social tastes, and 
wealthy. There was Theophilus Parsons, learned in the law, con- 
temptuous of public opinion and democracy, reactionary beyond 
most of his conservative contemporaries, more concerned with 
property than with human rights. Tall, slender, cold in his man- 
ner, colder in his reasoning, he stood out among the other members 
of the Junto because of his slovenliness in dress. Among his 
friends, at the dinner table, he was a brilliant conversationalist, for 
he liked nothing better than to eat and drink, talk and laugh, un- 
less it was to smoke, chew tobacco, and use snuff. He was the per- 


1 Hamilton’s Works (to Bayard), x, 384-87. 

2 Quoted by The Aurora, July 30, 1800. 3 August 5, 1800. 
4 Familiar Letters, 373; Lodge, Cabot. 

’ Memoir of Theophilus Parsons, 328-29; 336-42, 345, 418, 436, 


THE GRAPES OF WRATH 461 


sonificatian of the political intolerance of his class. There, too, 
was Stephen Higginson, one of the wealthiest and most cultured 
merchants of his day, a handsome figure of a man who took in- 
finite pains with his toilet and always carried a gold-headed cane. 
Given to writing for the press, he made ferocious attacks on John 
Hancock under the nom-de-plume of ‘Laco,’ and the truckmen on 
State Street whom he passed on his way to business taught a par- 
rot to cry, ‘Hurrah for Hancock; damn Laco.’ So intolerant and 
bigoted was his household that a child, hearing a visitor suggest 
that a Democrat might be honest, was shocked.! There also was 
John Lowell, able lawyer, cultured, ultra-conservative, disdainful 
of democracy; and there was Christopher Gore, who amassed a 
fortune in speculation, and held a brilliant position at the Bar. A 
striking figure he was, when he appeared at the unconventional 
meetings of the group, tall, stout, with black eyes and florid com- 
plexion, his hair tied behind and dressed with powder, courtly in 
his manners, eloquent in speech, utterly intolerant in his Federal- 
ism, and completely devoted to Hamilton’s policiés.2. These and 
their satellites were Hamilton’s Boston friends; more, they were 
the backbone of his personal organization, his shock troops. Thus, 
when he crossed into Massachusetts on his tour, he was going to 
his own with the knowledge that they would receive him gladly — 
and they did. 

Reaching Boston on Saturday evening, he conferred with his 
friends, and on Sunday ‘attended divine services at the Rev. Mr. 
Karkland’s.’ On Monday a dinner was given in his honor, where, 
the party paper insisted, ‘the company was the most respectable 
ever assembled in the town on a similar occasion.’ General Lincoln 
presided. Higginson and Major Russell of the ‘Centinel’ were 
vice-presidents. Governor Strong, the Lieutenant-Governor, the 
Speaker of the House, Chief Justice Dana, Ames, Cabot, several 
members of Congress, and members of ‘the Reverend Clergy’ sat 
about the boards. ‘The tables were loaded with every dainty the 
season affords and every luxury which could be procured.’ ? It ap- 
pears that some Adamsites or Jeffersonians declined to do homage, 


1 Thomas, Reminiscences, 1, 17; T. W. Higginson, Stephen Higginson, 137, 272, 280, 
273-76. iat 
2 Familiar Letters, 370-71, 381. 3 Centinel, June 21, 1800, 


4.62 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


for we find the ‘Centinel’ commenting that ‘had a certain citizen 
known that General Hamilton resembled his demi-god, Bonaparte, 
instead of refusing a ticket to the dinner he would have solicited 
the honor of kissing — his hand.’ ! The Hamiltonians were clearly 
delighted with the occasion; Hamilton himself expanded and 
talked with freedom in the friendly atmosphere. He talked for 
Pinckney and against Adams; and in an especially expansive 
moment, dwelling on the sinister presumption of democracy, said 
that within four years ‘he would either lose his head or be the 
leader of a triumphant army.’ The dinner over, the conference 
concluded, he made an inspection of Fort Independence on Castle 
Island, and was on his way, accompanied ‘as far as Lynn by a 
cavalcade of citizens.’ 2 Everything had been carried off with be- 
coming éclat, for had he not stayed at ‘the elegant boarding house 
of Mrs. Carter?’? Unhappily the carriage in which he rode with 
the ‘cavalcade’ broke down in the middle of the street,‘ to the de- 
light of the Jacobins, but his composure gave his followers much 
satisfaction. 

Had not the Adamsites implied that he had received the cold 
shoulder elsewhere in Massachusetts we might never have known 
his activities beyond Lynn. He was ‘everywhere welcomed with 
unequivocable marks of respect, cordiality, and friendship.’ He 
dined in Salem with Mr. Pickman, ‘drank tea at Ipswich,’ arrived 
at Davenport’s late in the evening, departed early in the morning 
for Portsmouth, and reached Newburyport on Sunday. That is 
the reason there was no demonstration there. But there in the 
evening he stayed with Parsons ‘in company with some of the 
most respectable gentlemen of the town.’ ® 

But Hamilton and the Junto were not soon to hear the last of 
that tour. The Democrats harped incessantly on the promise to 
lose his head or be the leader of a triumphant army. ‘We have 
often heard of a French gasconade,’ said ‘The Aurora,’ ‘but we 
have now to place alongside of it a Creole gasconade in America. 
Alexander Hamilton leading an army to effect a Revolution! 
Why, the very idea is as pregnant with laughter as if we were to be 
told of Sir John Falstaff’s military achievements.’ ® ‘Manlius’ 

1 Centinel, June 21, 1800. 3 Ihid. 


. § Aurora, June 21, 1800. 4 Aurora, June 30, 1800, 
6 Centinel, June 28, 1800, 6 August 9, 1800, 


THE GRAPES OF WRATH 463 


rushed to the attack, ostensibly in behalf of Adams, in the ‘Chron- 
icle.’ Why this trip to ‘disband the army’? Had Hamilton ever 
been in the camp before? Had he appeared ‘to plant the seed of 
distrust in the bosom of the troops? against Adams?’ And what a 
painful effect upon the great men of Boston! ‘Your personal ap- 
pearance threw poor Cabot into the shade. Even what had been 
deemed eloquence in the smiling Ames was soon reduced to com- 
mentary; and so petrifying was your power that our District 
Judge has scarcely since dared to report an assertion from his 
Magnus Apollo of Brookline, either on politics or banking.’ And 
lose his head or lead a triumphant army if Pinckney were not 
elected? ‘Your vanity was more gross than even your ignorance of 
the characters of the people of the eastern States.’ ! Two months 
later, the echoes were still heard. The Reverend Mr. Kirkland, 
flattered by Hamilton’s cultivation and ingratiation, and young, 
not content with indiscreetly repeating Hamilton’s observations 
made in company, rushed into the papers with an attack on 
Adams and a glorification of Hamilton. What a disgrace to the 
clergy, wrote ‘No Politician,’ for this flattered youth “to vindicate 
the character of a confessed adulterer, and artfully to sap the well- 
earned reputation of President Adams.’ ? Even King heard from a 
Bostonian that Hamilton ‘in his mode of handling [political 
themes] did not appear to be the great General which his great 
talents designate him.?* But Hamilton made his observations 
and reached his conclusions — that the leaders of the first order 
were in a mood to repudiate Adams, but that those of the second 
order, more numerous, were almost solidly for him. He merely 
changed his tactics. 


1 Chronicle, July 31, 1800. 3 Ibid., August 18, 1800. 
8 King’s Works (J. Hale to King), m1, 270. 


CHAPTER XX 
HAMILTON’S RAMPAGE 


I 


INDING that persuasion had failed to shake the fidelity of 
the second-class leaders, Hamilton bethought himself of coer- 
cion. The moment he returned to New York, he wrote Charles 
Carroll of Carrollton proposing to ‘oppose their fears to their pre- 
judices,’ by having the Middle States declare that they would not 
support Adams at all. Thus they might be ‘driven to support 
Pinckney.’ Both New Jersey and Connecticut, he thought, might 
agree to the plan, since in both places Adams’s popularity was on 
the wane. In any event, it was not ‘advisable that Maryland 
should be too deeply pledged to the support of Mr. Adams.’ ! 
The effect on Carroll was all that could have been desired. Two 
months later, an emissary of McHenry’s, sent to interview the 
venerable patriot, found that he considered Adams ‘totally unfit 
for the office of President, and would support... the election of 
General Pinckney.’ ? Throughout the summer the leaders in the 
inner circle of the Hamiltonian conspirators were busy with their 
pens. Richard Stockton urged on Wolcott the wisdom of making a 
secret fight. ‘Prudent silence... get in our tickets of electors... 
they will be men who will do right in the vote... and Mr. Pinck- 
ney will be the man of their choice.’ ® 
No one was deeper in the business than Wolcott, who, holding 
on to his position, and presenting a suave, unblushing front to 
his chief, was writing feverishly to the leaders of the conspiracy. 
While Hamilton was receiving the homage of his New England 
idolaters in June, Wolcott was writing Cabot that ‘if General 
Pinckney is not elected all good men will have cause to regret the 
inactivity of the Federal party.’ 4 In July he was writing McHenry 
that if ‘you will but do your part, we shall probably secure 
Mr. Pinckney’s election,’> and to Chauncey Goodrich that good 


1 Hamilton’s Works, x, 379-80. 2 Gibbs (McHenry-to Wolcott), m, 414-15, 
8 Gibbs, 1, 374-75. 4 Lodge, Cabot, 278-80. 5 Gibbs, 1, 381. 


HAMILTON’S RAMPAGE 465 


men thought Mr. ‘Adams ought not to be supported.’! He was 
receiving letters from Benjamin Goodhue, presumably Adams’s 
friend, concerning ‘Mr. Adams’ insufferable madness and vanity,’ ? 
and from McHenry that ‘Mr. Harper is now clearly of opinion 
that General Pinckney ought to be preferred.’ * In August he was 
assuring Ames that ‘Adams ought not to be supported,’ 4 and in 
September ‘The Aurora’ was charging that during that month he 
had declared in Washington ‘that Mr. Adams did not deserve a 
vote for President.’ > Clasping Adams’s hand with one of his, this 
consummate master of intrigue was using the other to wig-wag 
messages to Hamilton from the window of the fortress. 

But Hamilton found much to disconcert him. Albeit Cabot 
rather boasted that in July he had not yet paid a visit of courtesy 
to Braintree, and probably would not,® he was writing Hamilton 
that to discard Adams at that juncture would mean defeat in 
Massachusetts.’ He was opposed, however, only to an open 
rupture. Noah Webster, having made a New England tour of his 
own, and lingered a moment under the trees at Braintree, went 
over to Adams bag and baggage.’ All but two of the Federalist 
papers were supporting Adams with spirit. To prod him more, 
the Jeffersonian press was pouncing upon Hamilton ferociously. 
‘Dictator of the aristocratical party!’ ‘Father of the funding 
system!’ Working desperately for Pinckney, ‘continually flying 
through the continent rousing his partisans by the presence of 
their chief, prescribing and regulating every plan,’ was Hamilton, 
charged a Jeffersonian editor. Author of ‘a little book’ in which 
he ‘endeavors to give an elegant and pleasant history of his 
adulteries,’ he added.? Hamilton began to meditate a sensational 
stroke. 


II 


Meanwhile, the Jeffersonians, united, enthusiastic, thoroughly 
organized, confident, were waging war along the whole line. The 
mechanics who could vote, the small farmers, the liberals and 
Democrats, the private soldiers of the Revolution who felt they 


1 Gibbs, 11, 382. 2 Ihid., 379. 3 Thid., 384. 4 Ibid., 400-05. 
5 Aurora, September 11, 1800. 6 Lodge, Cabot (to Wolcott), 282. 
7 Lodge, Cabot, 286-88. ® Gibbs (Phelps to Wolcott), m, 380. 


® American Mercury, September 11, 1800. 


466 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


had been tricked, the small merchants, the Germans because of 
taxes and the proscription of Muhlenberg, the Irish because the 
Federalists abused them and passed the Alien Law, were almost a 
unit behind their chief. All the cost of the army and navy, and the 
frequent outrages of soldiers with nothing to do, brought support. 
In North Carolina, Gales, in ‘The Register,’ was using the camp 
near Raleigh as a veritable recruiting point for Democrats. The 
elght per cent loan of that day and the Excise Law of the day 
before were bringing great accessions to the ranks. The growing 
indebtedness of the Nation, and Wolcott’s admission that another 
eight per cent loan would be necessary, was making converts. 
The scandals in administration were creating havoc in Adminis- 
tration circles and driving Wolcott to distraction. The scandal of 
Jonathan Dayton, Federalist leader of New Jersey, broke, and the 
hailstones beat upon the head of Wolcott, who was the victim of 
his credulity alone. While Speaker, Dayton had made written ap- 
plication at the end of the session of 1798 for thirty-three thousand 
dollars as compensation for the House. That amount was not 
needed. Wolcott’s plea that he did not know he had given Dayton 
more than necessary was greeted with jeers. His assertion that he 
had the right to expect the unexpended balance to be immediately 
refunded only met derisive laughter. Not until the winter of 1799 
was the discovery made that Dayton had retained more than 
eighteen thousand dollars since July, 1798. Wolcott, discovering 
this fraud, summoned Dayton, wrote him a sharp letter, and re- 
covered the money — but not the interest.!. Meanwhile, Duane, 
in “The Aurora,’ was devoting pages to affidavits concerning 
Dayton’s notorious land frauds.? Defalcations were numerous, 
due, according to the apologists of the Administration, to ‘the 
difficulty of procuring men of standing and character... to exe- 
cute their duties.’ ? 

Then, to darken the picture for the Federalists, stories were 
afloat corroborative of the Jeffersonian charge that they favored 
aristocracy and monarchy. Again Adams appeared as the cham- 
pion of kingly government. Senator John Langdon, a reputable 
man, personally vouched in a signed letter to the truth of the 


1 Lodge, Cabot (Wolcott to Cabot), 278. _ 
2 Aurora, July 26, 28, 1800. 8 Gibbs, un, 162. 


HAMILTON’S RAMPAGE 7 467 


charge that, in the presence of himself and John Taylor of Caro- 
line, Adams had said that ‘he expected to see the day when Mr. 
Taylor and his friend, Mr. Giles, would be convinced that the 
people of America would not be happy without an hereditary 
chief and Senate — or at least for life.’ 1 This was greatly strength- 
ened from Federalist sources. ‘The observations of the President 
when he went through town [New Haven] last, made more Demo- 
crats than any other thing beside,’ wrote Timothy Phelps to 
Wolcott. ‘He told Dr. Dana he did not believe the United States 
could exist as a nation unless the Executive was hereditary.’ ? 

The lesser lights among the Federalists were likewise contribut- 
ing to the Jeffersonian cause. Noah Webster was being vigorously 
assailed in the ‘American Mercury’ for saying that reading and 
observation had convinced him that republicanism was impossible 
unless the poorer classes were excluded from the vote.? But the 
climax came with the publication of the stupid pamphlet of John 
Ward Fenno, who, with his father, had been editor of the Federal- 
ist organ for years. In ‘Desultory Reflections on the New Political 
Aspect of Public Affairs,’ he clearly reflected the views of Hamilton, 
to whom he referred as having been pitched ‘down the Tarpeian 
rock of oblivion, not for subsequent apostacy, but for the very 
deed of greatness itself.’ It was a slashing assault on Adams for 
making peace with France. Glorious prospects had been opening 
‘the doors of the temple of Janus,’ but Adams had acted in a 
‘puerile’ fashion. The masses were denounced as ‘the stupid popu- 
lace, too abject in ignorance to think rightly, and too depraved 
to draw honest deductions.’ The patriotic Federalists were, by 
Adams’s action, ‘by one sudden stroke in one short hour, beaten 
off their ground, overwhelmed with confusion, and left abandoned 
to all the ridicule and all the rage of their antagonists... and 
nauseating nonsense, meanness, abject servility, and the effem1- 
nacy of Sybaris now reign with a pomposity undisturbed even by 
any casual exertions of genius or common sense.’ Pickering had 
been dismissed because he ‘approached too near to holding a 
divided empire with [Adams] in the hearts of the people.’ The 
time had come to ‘repudiate the author of our evils.’ 


1 Aurora, November 15, 1800; Langdon to Samuel Ringgold. 
2 Gibbs, 7, 418-19. 3 August 7, 1800. 


468 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON - 


More: the form of government should be changed. ‘The con- 
tinent [should be] divided into ten, fifteen, or twenty counties, to 
be governed by a Lieutenant or Prefect appointed by the Execu- 
tive; certain subaltern appointments should be in his gift. These 
Prefects would constitute as proper an upper House for one 
branch of the Legislature as could be devised.’ The franchise 
should be ‘cut off from all paupers, vagabonds, and outlaws’ —. 
the poor, the democrats — and ‘placed in those hands to which it 
belongs, the proprietors of the country.’! This from the man who 
had edited the Hamilton Federalist organ in Philadelphia. Copies | 
were carried about in the pockets of the Jeffersonians and worn 
out by readings in the taverns. 

On top of this, Federalist leaders, writers, and papers began to 
hint at secession in the event of Jefferson’s election. It had be- 
come a habit. There had been talk of secession among them if the 
State debts were not assumed: talk again if the J ay ‘Treaty was not 
ratified. Wolcott’s father had written his son, long before, of its 
desirability if Jefferson should be elected. Four years previously 
the ‘Hartford Courant,’ the strongest Federalist paper in New 
England, began to publish letters by ‘Pelham,’ paving the way 
for the secession of the North. The South was bitterly assailed. 
There were more interesting objects than the Union, thought 
‘Pelham.’ The time had come to secede. A year later, ‘Gus- 
tavus’ began writing in the same paper on the same theme. Jef- | 
ferson was denounced as an atheist and traitor.22 In 1800, ‘Bur- 
leigh’ took up his pen to advocate secession in the event of Jeffer- 
son’s election. In this case the author was known — it was the 
fanatic John Allen, who, as a member of Congress, had charged 
Livingston with sedition because of his attack in the House on the _ 
Alien Law. In his initial letter he urged all Federalist papers to 
copy, and some did. The election of Jefferson would destroy the 
Constitution, result in anarchy, expel Federalists from office, 
wreck the financial system, and lead to Revolution, for ‘there is 
scarcely a possibility that we shall escape a civil war.’ This would 
be bad, but ‘less, far less, than anarchy or slavery.’ Secession 
would be almost certain. Where would the boundary be? At the 
Potomac? — the Delaware? — the Hudson?. New England might 

1 This pamphlet is in New York Public Library. 2 Welling’s Lectures, 274-75. 


HAMILTON’S RAMPAGE 469 


have trouble if New York and Pennsylvania were included in the 
Northern Confederacy. ‘They are large, wealthy, powerful. They 
have many men of intrigue and talent among them, desperate in 
their fortunes, ambitious and unprincipled.’ It would be hard to 
get them to join a peaceful body and keep them quiet. 

These were the leading political articles in the leading Federalist 
paper in the most uncompromising Federalist State through the 
campaign of 1800.1 In the ‘American Mercury,’ ‘Rodolphus’ re- 
plied with a stinging rebuke. ‘He tells us,’ wrote ‘Rodolphus,’ . 
‘that if Mr. Jefferson is elected our towns will be pillaged, our in- 
habitants rendered miserable and our soil dyed in blood; that we 
shall have a Jacobin government, that the Constitution... will 
fall a sacrifice, and finally if the man of his choice is not elected, 
the Federal Union must be destroyed and that the Northern 
States must form a separate Government. The writer is a Federal-. 
ist indeed.’ ? 

The Jeffersonians made the most of ‘Burleigh’s’ secession 
articles. 


III 


Nowhere were the Jeffersonian activities more annoying to the 
Federalists than in New England where Federalism thought itself 
permanently entrenched. It had reached its peak in 1798 during 
the war hysteria, and the next two years were marked by a notable 
decline. The activities of the defiant Democrats were intensified. 
Denunciations of the ‘aristocracy’ that governed, of the political 
meddling of the clergy, brought the fight personally home to the 
leaders. In Vermont, where Lyon had been persecuted and his fol- 
lowers aroused, the stamp tax and the extravagance in govern- 
ment made a deep impression on the small farmers. It was a 
scandal in the best regulated households that ‘Matthew Lyon and 
his cubs’ were prowling about the highways.* In Massachusetts, 
where Gerry had made a remarkable race for Governor in the 
spring, the fight was being made in every quarter, and Ames was 
wailing that ‘on the whole the rabies canina of Jacobinism has 


1 Hartford Courant, June 23, 30, July 7, 14, 21, 26, August 4, 11, 18, September 1, 15, 22, 
1800. 

2 American Mercury, July 10, 1800. 

§ Robinson, Jeffersonian Democracy in New England, 27. 


470 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


gradually passed of late years from the cities, where it was confined 
to the docks and the mob, to the country.’!_ In New Hampshire, 
the Jeffersonians had made an astonishing showing in the guber- 
natorial contest in the spring, carrying a number of the towns, 1n- 
cluding Concord and Portsmouth. There, under the leadership of 
John Langdon, they had capitalized the refusal of the Federalist 
Legislature to grant a charter to a bank which proposed to loan 
money in small sums, and place credit within the reach of the 
farmers and the poor.2 Their defeat, notwithstanding their heavy 
vote, encouraged them to persevere in their attacks on corpora- 
tions and the ‘privileged few.’ 

But it was in Connecticut that the Jeffersonians gave the Fed- 
eralists their greatest shock by the audacity of their attacks. 
There the Democrats, though few, made up in zeal and ability for 
what they lacked in numbers. In the home of Pierrepont Edwards, 
a Federal Judge and a foremost citizen, they perfected their plans 
for the campaign. Aaron Burr spent some time in the State assist- 
ing in the creation of a militant organization. A Federalist com- 
plained in a letter to Wolcott that ‘the Democrats spent all their 
time and talents for eight weeks endeavoring to persuade the 
ignorant part of the community that the Administration was en- 
deavoring to establish a monarchy; and even good Mr. Edwards 
told them he had held an important office under government, but 
that he had found them so vile and corrupt, he was determined to 
resign the office.’ ? Nothing could have been more distressing to 
the aristocratic and clerical oligarchy which had long lorded it over 
the people. The ‘Courant’ piously prayed that Connecticut would 
not ‘exhibit the distressing spectacle of two parties rending the 
State with their reproaches and whetting their swords for civic 
combat,’ and held up ‘the awful condition in Pennsylvania and 
Virginia’ as a warning.t The ‘New York Commercial Advertiser,’ 
founded by a son of Connecticut, was disheartened at the effron- 
tery of the Democrats. ‘Jacobinism in Connecticut,’ it said, ‘has 
heretofore been confined to back streets and dark recesses; but in 
consequence of the successes in other States it begins to creep forth 
and show its hideous front in good company.’ > In September the 


1 Robinson, Jeffersonian Democracy in New England, 27. . 
2 Centinel, March 1, 22, 1800. 3 Gibbs (Phelps to Wolcott), 11, 418-19. 
4 August 4, 1800. 8’ New York Commercial Advertiser, May 13, 1800. 


-HAMILTON’S RAMPAGE © 471 


‘American Mercury’ of Hartford was boasting through ‘Grac- 
chus’ that ‘in many towns where there was not a man who a few 
_months ago avowed the cause of republicanism, the friends of 
liberty and the Constitution have now a majority,’ although ‘in 
most towns there was a fight.’ } 

To Abraham Bishop, the fighting leader of the Jeffersonians, 
was left the congenial task of whipping the Federalists to a frenzy. 
A graduate of Yale, of which Dwight, popularly known as ‘the 
Pope of Federalism,’ and a man of scholarly attainments, was 
President, he was invited to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa oration at 
the commencement. It was assumed that he would speak on some 
literary or scientific subject, but nothing was more remote from 
his intentions. Very carefully, and with malice aforethought, he 
prepared a scathing arraignment of Federalist principles and 
policies. At the last moment the clergy discovered the nature of 
the discourse and recommended its rejection. One indignant 
partisan wrote Wolcott that ‘the Society discovered the cheat 
before it was delivered and destroyed its effect so far as was within 
their power.’? The ‘Courant’ explained that when the invitation 
was extended, the members of the fraternity were ‘ignorant of his 
sentiments,’ and of the fact that ‘he had been once desired by a 
committee of the society to resign the presidency because of pro- 
fanity.’ The moment it was found that the wicked man had 
written ‘a seditious and inflammatory libel on the religion and 
government of the country,’ it was decided to dispense with the 
oration.? But the seditious and irreligious Bishop had no notion of 
being robbed of an audience. The ‘Courant’ reported that ‘with 
an impudence and effrontery known only to weak or wicked men,’ 
Bishop “proceeded at seven o’clock to palm off on the public the 
production.’ * More than fifteen hundred men, women, and chil- 
dren, including some members of the clergy, heard him,> but the 
‘Courant,’ looking over the assemblage, solemnly declared it as 
‘a singular fact that every open reviler of religion was there and 
highly gratified,’ but that the young ladies of New Haven ‘refused 
to grace an audience thus collected and consisting of such charac- 
ters.’ & 


1 American Mercury, September 19, 1800. ~ 2 Gibbs (from Phelps), n, 418. 
3 Courant, September 15, 1800. 4 Ibid. 
5 Connecticut in Transition, 315-16. 6 Courant, September 15, 1800. 


472 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


~ No more slashing attack was heard during the campaign. The 
audience was sympathetic, jubilant. The orator in fine fettle, the 
subject to his taste. He attacked the extravagance in government, 
sneered at the ceremonious launching of war vessels, ridiculed the 
military pretensions of Hamilton. The army had not fought, but 
had ‘stood their ground bravely in their cantonments.’ The fund- 
ing system had ‘ruined thousands, but... has also led up to an 
aristocracy more numerous than the farmers-general in France, 
more powertul than all others because it combined the men of 
wealth.’ 

But it was for the political preachers of Connecticut that Bishop 
reserved his heaviest fire. ‘How much, think you, has religion 
been benefited by sermons intended to show that Satan and Cain 
were Jacobins?’ Then a contemptuous fling at ‘Pope’ Dwight — 
“Would Paul of Tarsus have preached to an anxious, listening 
audience on the propriety of sending envoys?’ After all, ‘the 
Captain of Salvation is not so weak as to require an army and 
navy and a majority in Congress to support His cause.’ ‘Then, 
falling into satire: ‘Let no one imagine that I would represent the 
clergy as acting out of their sphere. . . for is it not said unto them, 
“Go ye into all the world and preach politics to every creature. 
When men oppose ye, call them enemies of God and trample them 
under your feet.” .... When the people are assembled, say to them 
that the Lord reigneth on the earth in the midst of men of power 
and wealth; that he delighteth in the proud, even in those who are 
lofty; that he will exalt the vain, and lay in the dust they who are 
humble in his sight; that the great are gods; but that the little men 
are like the chaff which he driveth before the wind; that in the day 
of his power he will shine mightily on those who are in power, and 
that he will make the people under them like the hay and the 
stubble and the sweepings of the threshing floor.’ 

Immediately the speech was published in pamphlet form and 
sent broadcast over the country. Editions were printed in numer- 
ous towns and States.) Within a week an answer had been pub- 
lished in a pamphlet, ‘A Rod for a Fool’s Back,’ ? but it failed to af- 


1 Original copies published in both Philadelphia and Newark are in New York Publie 
Library. i 
2 Courant, September 22, 1800, 


HAMILTON’S RAMPAGE 473 


fect the popularity of Bishop’s ‘Oration on the Extent and Power 
of Political Delusions,’ and two months later, when he was at 
Lancaster during a session of the Legislature, he repeated the 
speech on invitation of Governor M’Kean.! It was a palpable hit. 


IV 


And it was a hit, primarily because it was an assault on the part 
the clergy was playing in the campaign. All over New England, 
and in New York and Philadelphia, ministers were preaching 
politics with an intemperance of denunciation and a recklessness 
of truth that seems incredible to-day. The game of the politicians 
to picture Jefferson as an atheist, a scoffer at religion who de- 
spised the Church and laughed at the Bible, was entrusted to the 
Ministerial Corps, which did the best it could. It was a line of 
slander that had followed Jefferson from the moment he forced 
religious liberty and toleration into the laws of Virginia. The only 
campaign canard of which Jefferson took cognizance was set afloat 
by the Reverend Cotton Smith, who proclaimed that the man of 
Monticello had accumulated his property by robbing a widow and 
fatherless children of their estate while acting as their executor. 
‘If Mr. Smith thinks that the precepts of the Gospel are intended 
for those who preach them as well as for others,’ wrote Jefferson, 
‘he will some day feel the duties of repentance and acknowledg- 
ment in such forms as to correct the wrong he has done. All this is 
left to his own conscience.’ ? But if Jefferson was content to leave 
to their consciences clergymen bearing false witness, his followers 
were not. When the Reverend Dr. Abercrombie of Philadelphia 
gravely warned his congregation against voting for an atheist, 
Duane made a biting reply. ‘He is the man who opposed reading 
the Declaration of Independence on 4th of July last,’ he wrote. 
“Need we wonder at his hatred of Mr. Jefferson?’ ? When the 
clergyman, stung by the attack, made a weak reply, Duane 
asked: ‘During the prevalence of yellow fever . . . in 1798 on a day 
in the house of Mr. Richard Potter in Germantown did you not 
provoke an argument in which you supported monarchical doc- 


1 Courant, November 17, 1800. 
2 Jefferson’s Works (to Uriah McGregory), x, 170-73. 
* Aurora, September 1, 1800, 


474 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


trines and assert that the country would never be happy until it 
had a king?’ ! To another minister, fortunately ‘the late Rev. Dr. 
J. B. Smith of Virginia,’ was ascribed one of the most amazing 
stories of the campaign, that Jefferson on passing a dilapidated 
church had sneeringly said that ‘it was good enough for Him Who 
was born in a manger.’ ? 

When the Reverend John M. Mason published a political pam- 
phlet under the cover of religion,’ accusing Jefferson of being a 
Deist, and the Reverend Dr. Lynn of New York, actively elec- 
tioneering for Pinckney against both Adams and Jefferson at the 
instance of Hamilton, printed another,‘ a Democratic pamphlet 
appeared declaring that ‘Jefferson is as good a Christian as 
Adams,’ and charging that ‘Pope’ Dwight, ten years before, had 
published a poem, ‘The Triumph of Infidelity,’ in which he named 
Pinckney as a Deist. In this pamphlet > Dr. Lynn was handled as 
roughly as the Philadelphia pulpit politician. Had he not called on 
a Democrat while electioneering for Pinckney and been forced to 
admit that Jefferson was a good man? Had he not, when pressed, 
been forced to concede that Pinckney was a Deist? Had not the 
wife of the Democrat indignantly taken the clergyman to task for 
his ‘partiality to a self-confessed adulterer?’ 

If the Jeffersonians were attacking the political preachers with 
meat-axe and artillery, they were not without provocation enough. 
In Connecticut, these ministers were the backbone of the Federal- — 
ist Party machine, with Dwight as their leader, than whom none 
more offensively intolerant ever breathed curses on a foe. In 
Massachusetts, when the Reverend Ebenezer Bradford espoused — 
the cause of democracy, he was ferociously abused by his fel- — 
low ministers and the Federalist papers, ostracized in the name 
of Christ by his fellow clergymen, and refused a pulpit in Essex — 
County. It was not a time when ministers in some sections were — 
making much of the action of Christ in seeking his disciples among — 
workers and fishermen.® The feeling of many of these was expressed — 
by the Reverend David Osgood when, speaking of the masses, — 
he said that ‘they may know enough for the places and stations to — 


1 Aurora, September 4, 1800. 2 Courant, August 25, 1800. 
3 A Voice of Warning. ¢ Sertous Considerations. 
§ Serious Facts. ® Morse, Federalist Party in Massachusetts, 183-34. 


HAMILTON’S RAMPAGE AT5 


which Providence has assigned them; may be good and worthy 
members of the community, provided they would be content to 
move in their own sphere and not meddle with things too high for 
them.’ } 

In one pamphlet the case against Jefferson’s religion was set 


~ forth in detail — he questioned the story of the Deluge; did not 


believe the Bible in its entirety was inspired; and was opposed to 
teaching the Bible in the public schools. ‘No one, I believe,’ 
wrote this distressed Christian, ‘has openly and publicly asserted 
that Jefferson is a Christian.’? Soon a pamphlet in defense was in 
circulation. “Read, ye fanatics, bigots, hypocrites ....and you 
base calumniators whose efforts to traduce are the involuntary 
tribute of envy to a character more pure than your own — read 
and learn and practice the religion of Jefferson as displayed in the 
sublime truth and inspired language of his ever memorable “‘act 
establishing religious liberty.” Read his views on slavery in his 
*‘Notes on Virginia” — “‘I tremble for my country when I reflect 
that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”’? The 
‘Chronicle’ was amused to observe ‘the characters who are pro- 
fessed champions of religious zeal.’ Who were they? ‘What shall 
we say of a faction that has at its head a confessed and professed 
adulterer? ...In connection with this Saint we have a group of 
zealots, consisting of gamblers, bankrupts, Saturday evening ca- 
rousers, or, to comprise the whole in one general appellation, a 
British Essex Junto intermixed with a few clerical hypocrites who 
have formed an alliance, offensive and defensive, to calumniate 
Mr. Jefferson.’ 4 The ‘American Mercury’ dwelt on contributions 
made by Jefferson to the Church and to needy clergymen. ‘Thus 
while Mr. Jefferson is ... practicing the blessed religion of Jesus 
Christ by acts of charity and benevolence... these political par- 
sons are abusing that holy religion and profaning the temple of 
God by fulminating lies and slander against Mr. Jefferson.’5 
Thus through the summer and autumn and into the winter the 


1 Morse, Federalist Party in Massachusetts, 95, note. 

2 The Claims of Thomas Jefferson to the Presidency Examined at the Bar of Christianity, 
probably by Asbury Dickens in New York Public Library. 

3 Address to the People of the United States, etc., by John James Beckley, in New York 
Public Library. 

4 Independent Chronicle, June 30, 1800. 5 American Mercury, October 2, 1800. 


476 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


political preachers continued their assaults, and the Jeffersonians 
replied without undue reverence for the cloth. Everywhere the 
Federalist leaders were assuming a pious pose, even Sedgwick 
and Ames and Otis were becoming religious, and the Democrats 
greeted their pose with ribald mirth. Into an amusing imaginary 
diary of Jonathan Dayton of the soiled reputation, Duane was 
writing the notation: ‘Went to church — must go to church — 
Federalists must be pious — ’twill do a great deal of good.’ ! 
When an appeal was made to Catholics to vote against Jefferson, 
Duane dryly commented: ‘We presume the. . . reason to be that 
it was owing to Mr. Jefferson that the Catholic priest was saved 
from being hanged for going into... Virginia ... and that to his 
toleration law it was owing that the Catholic can now build 
churches and adore God without incurring penalties of fine and 
imprisonment.’ 2 

Thus religion in virulent form fought with politics in the 
campaign of 1800. 


Vv 


But this sort of fighting and sniping was not working to the dis- 
advantage of Adams —and that was of some concern to Hamilton, 
who had concluded that he would be happier under the presidency 
of Jefferson than under a continuation of Adams. Scurrility there 
was in abundance, but Adams suffered little. Occasional references 
were made to his vanity, his love of pomp, his partiality to titles, 
and to his writings as evidence of monarchical tendencies, but 
these were mild enough. With the political preachers and editors 
abusing Jefferson, and with the Democrats attacking Hamilton, it 
was time for some one to assault Adams — and Hamilton dele- 
gated himself to the task. During the summer, Adams, smarting 
under the discovery of the treachery of his party associates, had 
been freely talking in unguarded conversation of an ‘English’ 
party,’ and naming Hamilton and his friends. This furnished the 
pretext. 

On the first of August, Hamilton wrote a note to Adams asking 
a verification or denial of the report that he had said there was a 
British faction with Hamilton at the head. This was sent to Cabot 

1 Aurora, March 31, 1800. 3 Ibid., October 14, 1800. 


HAMILTON’S RAMPAGE 477 


for transmission to Braintree. The cunning leader of the Essex 
Junto, in acknowledging the receipt of the letter, suggested that 
perhaps the election of Jefferson would be necessary for the reuni- 
fication of the Federalist Party. Were Pinckney chosen, he would 
encounter the venomous hostility of the Adamsites. How would it 
do for the Federalists to throw their support to Burr? Many 
Federalists favored such action.! Adams ignored the letter from 
Hamilton, as the latter unquestionably supposed he would. Two 
days after its transmission and before it could have possibly 
reached the President, Hamilton wrote Wolcott of his ‘impatience’ 
at the latter’s delay in sending the ‘statement of facts which you 
promised me.’ The trusted member of Adams’s official family had 
promised his chief’s most bitter foe the ammunition for attack. It 
was plain, said Hamilton, working on Wolcott’s fears, that unless 
something were done the Adams faction ‘will completely run us 
down in public opinion.’ Had not Wolcott’s name been bandied 
about with Hamilton’s as a member of the British party? ? 

Later in the month he wrote McHenry, then nursing his wrath 
in retirement, of his plan to publish a pamphlet defending himself 
and friends and attacking Adams. He was prepared to put his 
name to it, but this he could not do without ‘its being conclusively 
inferred that as to every material fact I must have derived my in- 
formation from members of the Administration.’ To both Mc- 
Henry and Wolcott he sent a copy of the letter.? At the moment 
he wrote, he was having difficulty with some of his advisers. 
Cabot and Ames had discussed the wisdom of Hamilton’s putting 
his name to the pamphlet, and both agreed it would be indiscreet. 
It should be remembered that Adams might be reélected. Ham- 
ilton’s sponsorship of the pamphlet would give it force with men 
who needed no conversion, while with his enemies ‘it would be 
converted into new proof that you are a dangerous man.’* A 

‘month later, Hamilton was still in doubt about affixing his name, 
but evidently anxious for encouragement to do so. Thus he wrote 
Wolcott that ‘anonymous publications cannot affect anything,’ 
but that ‘some of the most delicate of the facts stated I hold from 
the three ministers, yourself particularly, and I do not count my- 


1 Lodge, Cabot, 283-84. 2 Hamilton’s Works, x, 383-84, 8 Ihid., 388-89, 
4 Lodge, Cabot (Cabot to Hamilton), 284-86, 


478 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


self at liberty to take the step without your permission.’! On 
October 1st, Hamilton sent a second letter to Adams, through 
Cabot, who, ten days later, wrote that it had been transmitted,? 
but no reply was made. Nothing could have suited Hamilton 
better. Thus the pamphlet was written and sent to the editor of 
the New York ‘Gazette’ to print. It bore the name of Hamilton. 
It was to be guarded from general publicity and sent only to lead- 
ing Federalists over the country. 

And right here the uncanny cleverness of Burr again intervened. 
The suave little black-eyed master of espionage had known 
Hamilton’s slate for the Assembly within an hour after the caucus 
had adjourned; when Hamilton’s caucus decided to ask Jay to 
call an extra session of the Legislature to defeat the effect of the 
election, the fact was heralded in the papers the next day; and 
now Burr was to see a copy of the printed pamphlet before the eye 
of its author had seen it. Just how he got possession of the copy 
will never be known. His intimate political associate and author- 
ized biographer merely says that he learned it was in the press and 
‘arrangements were accordingly made for a copy as soon as the 
printing of it was complete.’ * Parton has a more colorful story. 
Burr was an early riser, and, walking in the street near Hamilton’s 
house one morning, he met a boy carrying a covered basket. He 
always spoke to children. 

‘What have you there, my lad?’ 

‘Pamphlets for General Hamilton.’ 

Whereupon he requested and received a copy, immediately 
summoned Davis and two others to his house, where extracts were 
copied and hastened with the utmost speed to ‘The Aurora’ and 
the New London ‘Bee.’4 There is still another version of the 
general circulation that neither biographer mentions — that of 
the editor of the New York ‘Gazette,’ who was forced to an ex- 
planation in self-defense. The general circulation was ‘contrary 
to the expectation ... that it would be restricted to particular 
quarters. The editor of the Gazette thinks it his duty to exonerate 
Mr. Hamilton by making it known that the thing has happened in 
direct opposition to his views. He had given the most precise in- 


1 Hamilton’s Works, x, 389-90. 2 Lodge, Cabot, 293. 
§ Davis, Burr, u, 65. ‘ Parton, 1, 126-27; Davis, n, 65. 


HAMILTON’S RAMPAGE 479 


structions that the circulation might be deferred; but the Editor, 
having been informed that by a breach of confidence or indiscre- 
tion somewhere it was likely that extracts might appear in some 
newspapers, communicated the intelligence to Mr. Hamilton, who 
... being about to depart for Albany left a letter with a friend 
directing him that if such a thing should happen, then to permit 
the letter to be thrown into circulation.’! This explanation did 
not appear, however, until Hamilton found that the tremendous 
sensation the pamphlet created was not reacting entirely in his 
favor. And for a sensation there was cause enough. 


VI 


An amazing production this, for the middle of the campaign. 
Adams did ‘not possess the talents adapted to the administration 
of government.’ There were ‘great and intrinsic defects in his 
character which unfit him.’ Even during the Revolution, Hamilton 
had entertained doubts as to ‘the solidity of his understanding.’ 
When Adams had conducted Madame de Vergennes, wife of the 
Foreign Minister in Paris, to dinner, and been rewarded with her 
comment that he was ‘the Washington of negotiation,’ he had in- 
terpreted it as an illustration of ‘a pretty knack of paying compli- 
ments,’ when he might have said that it disclosed ‘a dexterous 
knack of disguising sarcasms.’ His vanity was so great that it was 
‘more than a harmless foible.’ True, Hamilton had sought to 
elect Thomas Pinckney in 1796, but this was due to the ‘disgusting 
egotism, the distempered jealousy, and the ungovernable indis- 
cretion of Mr. Adams’s temper, joined to some doubts of the 
correctness of his maxims of administration.’ Adams’s letter to 
Tench Coxe, charging the Pinckneys with being English toadies, 
was silly; his conduct in preventing the French war was infamous. 
This latter had come out of the vice of not consulting his constitu- 
tional advisers — meaning Wolcott, Pickering, and McHenry. 
He had thus fallen into the hands of ‘miserable intriguers’ with 
whom ‘his self-love was more at ease.’ With gay disregard of the 
truth, Hamilton denied that there was any conspiracy to interfere 
with Adams’s plans at Trenton. 

More amazing still, Adams was denounced for the dismissal of 

1 Copied in the Commercial Advertiser, November 27, 1800. 


480 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


two traitors in his Cabinet, and this, despite the fact that another, 
who remained, had furnished the writer with much of the material 
for the pamphlet. There was no cause for the dismissals — none 
at all. It was only Adams’s ‘paroxysms of rage, which deprived 
him of self-command and produced very outrageous behavior.’ 
Pickering had been driven out because he was ‘justly tenacious of 
his own dignity and independence.’ The Adams interview with 
McHenry called for both ‘pain and laughter’ — an incredible 
performance. Then followed more abuse because Adams had not 
given Fries and others to the scaffold. Then — a pitiful touch — 
for not appointing Hamilton commander-in-chief to succeed 
Washington. Here the author entered into more personal griev- 
ances. Having pictured Adams as an ingrate, a liar, and a fool 
unfit for high administrative office, the author concluded with the 
statement that because ‘the body of Federalists, for want of suffi- 
cient knowledge of facts, are not convinced of the expediency of 
relinquishing him,’ Hamilton would ‘not advise the withholding 
from him of a single vote.’ } 

It was the most astounding political performance in American 
history — and the Nation rocked with mingled imprecations and 
laughter. Even Cabot was a little shocked. ‘All agree, he wrote 
Hamilton, ‘that the execution is masterly, but I am bound to tell 
you that you are accused by respectable men of egotism; and some 
very worthy and sensible men say you have exhibited the same 
vanity in your book which you charge as a dangerous quality and 
great weakness in Mr. Adams.’ ? 

Major Russell, of the ‘Centinel’ in Boston, was painfully em- 
barrassed, and flopped about like a fish on the burning sands. In 
one issue he supported Adams, and denounced the author of an 
attack on Hamilton’s action as ‘as well qualified for the task as a 
Billingsgate oyster is to contemplate the principles of the Newton- 
ian philosophy.’* In another issue he regretted Hamilton’s ‘ill- 
timed epistle,’ and denounced ‘an imported renegado of the name 
of Cooper’ who had written Hamilton a “saucy production’ to the 
effect that if he would admit the authorship of the pamphlet he 
would ask for his indictment under the Sedition Law.‘ This is 


1 Hamilton’s Works, vu, 309-64, 2 Lodge; Cabot, 298-300. 
3 Centinel, November 15, 1800. 4 Ihid., November 26, 1800. 


HAMILTON’S RAMPAGE 481 


evidence enough that Russell had parted with his sense of humor, 
else he would have appreciated the shot. The Hartford ‘Courant’ 
contented itself by merely reprinting, without comment, the 
Jeffersonian New London ‘Bee’s’ excoriation of Hamilton.! The 
New York ‘Commercial Advertiser’ was silent, but gave space to 
the advertisement of a pamphlet entitled ‘A Letter to General 
Hamilton, occasioned by His Letter to President Adams — by a 
Federalist.’ ? 

The Jeffersonian papers made the most of the opportunity. 
The ‘American Mercury’ of Hartford, announcing the arrival of 
the pamphlet, explained that, ‘since General Hamilton has secured 
a copyright to his masterly production,’ only extracts could be 
given. It was evidently written in the interest of Pinckney, who, 
having been ‘educated at the University of Oxford’ in England, 
‘was naturally’ supported by the British faction.? ‘I am sorry, 
sir,’ wrote the author of an open letter to Hamilton in the ‘Inde- 
pendent Chronicle’ of Boston, ‘that you have been persecuted in 
the manner you mention, ... but does it show a man of fortitude 
and independence to be continually groaning, like some feeble old 
woman under her troubles? .. . Egotism is the mark of a weak and 
vain mind. Here, General, you descend from your usual greatness 
to the level with female vanity.’ 4 

Duane, of “The Aurora,’ fell upon it with the zest of a kitten 
lapping cream: ‘John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and the 
Pinckneys are now fairly before the public,’ he wrote, ‘not in the 
partial drawings of their political rivals, the Republicans. Their 
claims and pretensions to public confidence are exhibited by 
themselves.’> The Portsmouth ‘Ledger’ struck the same note: 
‘If President Adams is what General Hamilton and the Essex 
Junto represent him, and if Charles Cotesworth Pinckney is what 
President Adams in his letter to Tench Coxe has represented him, 
viz., a British partisan — can any one hesitate to say that Mr. 
Jefferson is the most suitable of the three for President?’ ® 

But the most telling reply appeared in a pamphlet ascribed to 
James Cheetham, the New York editor.’ Of course Hamilton was 


1 October 27, 1800. 2 November 4, 1800. 
3 October 30, 1800. 4 December 1, 1800. 
® October 29, 1800. ® Reprinted in The Aurora, November 13, 1800. 


7 Answer to Alexander Hamilton’s Letter Concerning the Public Conduct and Character of 
John Adams. 


482 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


a monarchist, it said. It had been ‘a thousand times reiterated 
from New Hampshire to Georgia.’ The Madame de Vergennes 
incident? ‘Your references to a certain private journal of Mr. 
Adams was surpassingly brutal and low. They demonstrate the 
imbecility of your cause and point out the base malignity of your 
heart.’ The Adams letter to Tench Coxe? ‘Evidently written in 
some jocular moment.’ The cause of Hamilton’s hostility? ‘Envy, 
ambition, and the loaves and fishes.’ The French peace? ‘If your 
intrusive advice had been received, what would have been the 
condition of your country? Embroiled in an unprofitable war, 
commerce would have been at a stand, and the cause of liberty on 
the decline. A standing army would have gluttonized on the sub- 
stance of society.” Adams? True, the ‘Duke of Braintree’ had 
‘very slender pretensions to consistency of character,’ and the 
Nation’s hope was in Jefferson, ‘who has walked with dignity in 
every public and private calling,’ whose mind ‘is illumined with 
science and whose heart is replete with good’; who ‘has stood firm 
and unshaken amidst the venality of courts and the temptations 
of power.’ 

Under such lashings Hamilton writhed and was eager to make 
reply. ‘The press teems with replies,’ he wrote Pickering, ‘and I 
may finally think it expedient to publish a second time. In this 
case I shall reénforce my charges with new anecdotes. My 
friends will, no doubt, be disposed to aid me. You probably pos- 
sess some that are unknown tome. Pray let me have them without 
delay.’? But his friends had no such disposition. They had had 
enough. Ames wrote him scornfully of his critics, who were un- 
worthy of notice. ‘It is therefore the opinion of your friends that 
the facts stated must be left to operate on the public mind; and 
that the rage of those whom they wound will give them currency.’ ? 

The Federalist Party had been split in two with a battle-axe. 


VII 


Its leaders realized the hopelessness of their prospects. Many 
did not care. McHenry, smarting in Maryland, wrote Wolcott 
that the lack of courage and initiative on the part of the leaders, 
and their failure to fight Adams in the open, meant defeat. What 

1 Hamilton’s Works, x, 391. 2 Ames, 1, 283-85. 


HAMILTON’S RAMPAGE 483 


did they do? ‘They write private letters,’ said the scornful poet- 
politician. “To whom? To each other, but they do nothing to 
give direction to the public mind. They observe even in their con- - 
versation a discreet circumspection generally, ill calculated to 
diffuse information. ... They meditate in private. ... If the party 
recovers its pristine character ...shall I ascribe it to such cun- 
ning, paltry, indecisive, back-door conduct?’ ! And for once in his 
life McHenry was wise and right. Unable to meet the issues, the 
Federalist Big-Wigs still hoped to win through sharp practice. 
They got their cue from the Jeffersonians, who, finding from the 
election of the year before that the selection of electors by dis- 
tricts would result in the loss of one or two in Virginia, changed 
the law and provided for their election by the Legislature. This 
was enough for the Federalists in Massachusetts, where district 
elections would have given Jefferson at least two votes. Otis and 
others wrote the Speaker of the House and the President of the 
Senate to change the law and have the Legislature choose. The 
change was made. Estopped from complaining by their own ac- 
tion in Virginia, the Jeffersonians denounced the change in Massa- 
chusetts as a trick of the Essex Junto to rob Adams and elect 
Pinckney,? and much bitterness was aroused. In Maryland the 
district system was favorable to the Jeffersonians and the Federal- 
ists there were importuned from without to have the Governor call 
an extraordinary session of the Legislature to give that body the 
power.? Owing to the almost equal strength of the parties in that 
State, however, the leaders were afraid to act, and a series of let- 
ters appeared, first in the Baltimore ‘Gazette,’ and later in pam- 
phlet form, citing the action of the Democrats in Virginia and the 
retaliation in Massachusetts. ‘Should the State of Maryland suffer 
itself to be bullied out of its rights... by the clamors of the parti- 
sans in Virginia?’ demanded the author.t ‘The Aurora’ charged 
that James Carroll had said at Annapolis that the Governor should 
call the General Assembly together to deprive the people of the 
right to vote for electors.> But when it came to the test the cour- 
age of the Marylanders failed and no change was made. 


1 Gibbs, 11, 384-86. 2 American Mercury, June 19, 1800. 

§ Steiner (Hamilton to McHenry), 466; (Dickinson to McHenry), 471. 

4A Series of Letters on the Subject of ‘The Legislative Choice’ of Electors in Maryland, by 
*Bystander.’ 5 August 4, 1800, 


484 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Only in Pennsylvania did the Jeffersonians have a real griev- 
ance. The most sanguine of the Federalists could find no silver 
lining to the cloud here. Fitzsimmons complained that in Philadel- 
phia, ‘a city of 60,000 inhabitants, not a man is to be found who 
is fit for the station who will accept the nomination for Congress.’ ! 
The envenomed Uriah Tracy, after traveling through the State, 
thought the outlook hopeless. M’Kean had ‘brought forward 
every scoundrel who can read and write into office.’ The Demo- 
crats, “with the joy and ferocity of the damned,’ were enjoying 
‘the mortification of the few remaining honest men.’ Tracy had 
seen ‘very many Irishmen’ throughout the State — ‘the most God- 
provoking Democrats this side of hell.’ Then ‘the Germans are 
both stupid, ignorant and ugly, and are to the Irish what the 
negroes of the South are to their drivers.” The Democrats were 
‘establishing presses and newspapers in almost every town and 
county in the country and the Federal presses are failing for want 
of support.’? Under these conditions the Federalists ‘conceived 
the idea of depriving Pennsylvania of any voice at all in the elec- 
tion — an idea not unreasonable, since no provision had been 
made as to the method of choosing electors. In July, Senator 
Bingham had written Wolcott that there was little probability 
that the State would have ‘any agency in the election,’ but in any 
event its vote would be ‘equalized from the preponderance which 
the parties reciprocally possess in the two branches of the Legis- 
lature.’ ° | 

In November, Governor M’Kean called an extraordinary ses- 
sion. In the Senate the Federalists had a small majority; in the 
House the Democrats had the advantage; on joint ballot the 
Democrats outnumbered their opponents. The Democrats urged 
a joint ballot; the Federalists laughed the proposal to scorn. Ex- 
citement rose to fever heat. Charges were made that Liston, the 
British Minister, was using money to affect the result.4 The State, 
at the moment, was Jeffersonian, and the legislators were deluged 
with petitions for a joint ballot, but petitions from the people had 
never impressed the Hamiltonians. These stood firm — holding 


1 Gibbs (to Wolcott), 1, 388-90. 8 Jiid., u, 399. 
3 Tbid., 11, 387-88. ; 
4 Aurora, November 11, 1800, 


HAMILTON’S RAMPAGE 485 


the power of veto. At length they made a concession to the end 
that the State might not be deprived of any voice. The Senate 
could select seven electors, the House eight. The Democrats 
writhed and raved without avail. The Federalists were relentless. 


CHAPTER XXI 
DEMOCRACY TRIUMPHANT 


I 


HE final contest was staged in the new capital at Washington. 

It was as though destiny had arranged a new setting for the 
new drama on which the curtain was now rising. In the glamorous 
days of Federalist supremacy, Philadelphia, with its wealth, its 
fashion, and princely houses, harmonized with the spirit of govern- 
ment. The aristocratic party thrived in an atmosphere of luxury. 
Consistency called for a stage setting of more simplicity, in a 
wilderness suggesting the frontier, when the curtain rose on the 
triumph of democracy. 

When that charming philosopher of cynicism, Gouverneur 
Morris, just elected to the Senate, reached the new capital in the 
clearing, after days of bumping and hardships on the woodsy road 
through Maryland, he looked about him with a smile and chuckled. 
Writing the Princesse de la Tour et Taxis, he poked gentle fun at 
the new seat of government. ‘We only need here houses, cellars, 
kitchens, scholarly men, amiable women, and a few other such 
trifles to possess a perfect city,’ he said, ‘for we can walk over it as 
we would in the fields and woods, and, on account of a strong frost, 
the air is quite pure. I enjoy it all the more because my room fills 
with smoke as soon as the door is closed. . . . I hasten to assure you 
that building stone is plentiful, that excellent bricks are baked 
here, that we are not wanting in sites for magnificent mansions... 5 
in a word, that this is the best city in the world to live in — in the 
future.’ } 

Ten days before Morris wrote, Mrs. Adams had reached the 
capital in the wilds leoking older and graver, and without a 
ceremonious reception, due to jealousies among the socially am- 
bitious over the choice of a master of ceremonies.” After the well- 
traveled roads to Philadelphia, the journey to Washington had 
been quite enough to add to both her age and gravity. On the way 

1 Morris, Diary, 1, 394-95. 2 Gibbs (Wolcott to wife), 1, 456, 


DEMOCRACY TRIUMPHANT 487 


from Baltimore her party had been lost in the woods, wandering 
aimlessly about for two hours until rescued by a wandering negro. 
“Woods are all you see from Baltimore until you reach this city, 
which is only so in name,’ she wrote her daughter. ‘Here and there, 
a small cot, without a glass window, interspersed amongst the 
forest through which you travel miles without seeing a human 
being.’ Nor was the grandeur of the President’s house entirely to 
her liking. From her windows she could see on the Potomac the 
“vessels as they pass and repass.’ But a rapid survey of the large 
mansion with its numerous draughty rooms, convinced her that it 
would require thirty servants ‘to attend and keep the apartment 
in order, and perform the ordinary business of the house and 
stables.’ Not a single apartment finished. ‘The great unfinished 
audience [East] room I have made a drying room of to hang up the 
clothes in,’ she wrote glumly. But — added the tactful Abigail — 
‘when asked how [I like it, say that I write you the situation is 
beautiful, which is true.’?! A few days later she wrote of the im- 
patience of the ladies for a drawing-room, but ‘I have no looking 
glasses but dwarfs for this house, nor a twentieth part lamps 
enough to light it.’ Had the disgusted Abigail fared forth for a 
peep into the living arrangements of others, she might have 
thought herself more fortunate. But surveying the city from her 
point of vantage she would have found little to tempt to a tour of 
inspection. 

Even then, it was a ‘city of magnificent distances,’ the houses 
separated by miles of mud roads, not entirely free from stumps. 
Travel by night was precarious. Blackness impenetrable, except 
when the moon was at its full, settled down over the homes and 
the frog ponds. Morris, having made an evening call, was forced 
to remain all night, for the road was ‘not merely deep but danger- 
ous to drive in the dark.’* James A. Bayard and a party of 
Federalist leaders, venturing forth on a return to their lodgings 
from the home of a friend two miles from town, were caught in a 
storm, and the coachman losing his way, they drove about the 
waste lands throughout the night, threatened every moment by 
the ruts and ravines.’ 


1 Adams, Letters of Mrs. Adams, u, 239-41. 3 Ibid., 243-44. 
§ Morris. Diary, u, 396. 4Mrs. Smith, 9-10. 


488 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Pennsylvania Avenue, stretching from the President’s house to 
the Capitol, bordered by miasmic swamps, did not at this time 
boast a single building; nor would it have been possible to have 
lived along this causeway ‘without devoting its wretched tenant 
to perpetual fevers.’? From the steps of the Capitol one could 
count seven or eight boarding-houses, one tailor’s shop, one shoe- 
maker’s, one printing establishment, the home of a washwoman, a 
grocery shop, a stationery store, a dry-goods house, and an oyster 
market. And this was all. Three quarters of a mile away on the 
Eastern Branch stood five or six houses and an empty warehouse. 
At the wharf, not a single ship. From the President’s house to 
Georgetown living conditions were better because of immunity 
from swamps, but the wretched roads made it all but prohibitive 
as a place. of residence for members of Congress. Six or seven of 
the more fastidious braved the distance and found comfortable 
quarters; two or three found lodgings near the President’s house; 
but the remainder crowded into the boarding-houses on Capitol 
Hill. In the best of these, by sharing a room one could have 
attendance, wood, candles, food, and an abundance of liquor for 
fifteen dollars a week. However, the fare was unsatisfactory, the 
beef not good, and vegetables hard to get.2 Such was the hair- 
trigger delicacy of the political situation that this packing of the 
politicians might easily have led to altercations and bloodshed 
had they not seen fit to herd together according to their political 
views. There was some gambling, some drinking, but Gallatin 
observed that for the most part the members ‘drank politics’ 
instead of liquor.® 

How the dandies of the Federalist circle must have missed the 
royal hospitality at Mrs. Bingham’s! Pathetic efforts were put 
forth to create something that might pass for society, but so 
limited were the resources that the lone church at the bottom of 
Capitol Hill, which had previously served as a tobacco house, was 
found alluring, and women donned their finery for worship.4 The 
Thomas Laws, who had one of the few pretentious houses, organ- 
ized a ‘dancing assembly’ to which many subscribed.’ Mrs. Law, 


1 Adams, Gallatin (Gallatin to his wife), 252-55, 
2 Iiid., 255. 3 Ind., 255. 
4 Mrs. Smith, 13-15, 5 Tbid., 4. 


DEMOCRACY TRIUMPHANT 489 


related to both Lord Baltimore and Mrs. Washington, who aspired 
to the scepter of Mrs. Bingham, was a worldly woman, overfond 
of admiration and company, and finally there was a divorce. But 
at this time she drew the gayer element to her by her merry 
hospitality. ‘Lay down your hat, we have a fine roast turkey and 
you must stay and eat it,’ she would say to a caller, and soon 
others would casually appear, and an informal party would result.4 
Callers in the old houses in Georgetown where Southern hos- 
pitality held sway, found ‘bread, butter, ham, and cakes set be- 
fore them,’ and on leaving they would likely as not carry away 
cake and apples in their pockets, a bottle of milk in their hands.2 
Great was the amusement of the fashionable men and women, who 
had been so elegantly served at the Binghams’ by the French chef, 
on finding themselves jolting over the dirt roads to their lodgings 
with their pockets crammed with cake. 

This was the Washington into which Jefferson was carried in a 
stage-coach for the decisive struggle of his career. Wishing to pay 
his respects to Adams, for whom he felt more respect than did the 
Hamiltonian wing of the President’s own party, he wondered if the 
inordinate vanity of his defeated rival would interpret the call as 
an attempt to humiliate him. He determined to take the chance. 
Entering the President’s house, he found Adams alone — the old 
man in those difficult days was all but isolated. One glance was 
enough to justify the caller’s fears. In great agitation, and neglect- 
ing first to offer his visitor a chair, Adams burst forth: ‘You have 
turned me out; you have turned me out.’ 

With the gentleness of an elder soothing a hurt child, Jefferson 
replied, drawing on his familiarity with the workings of the minds 
and hearts of men, ‘I have not turned you out, Mr. Adams; and I 
am glad to avail myself of this occasion to show that I have not 
and to explain my views. In consequence of a division of opinion 
existing among our fellow-citizens, as to the proper constitution 
of our political institutions, and of the wisdom and propriety of 
certain measures... that portion of our citizens that approved 
and advocated one class of these opinions and measures selected 
you as their candidate... and their opponents selected me. If 
you and myself had been inexistent, or for any cause had not been 

1 Mrs. Smith, 3, 2 Ibid., 5, 


490 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


selected, other persons would have been selected in our places; 
and thus the contest would have been carried on, and with the 
same result, except that the party which supported you would 
have been defeated by a greater majority, as it was known that, 
but for you, your party would have carried their unpopular 
measures much further than they did.’ Suffering as he was under 
the treachery of the Hamiltonians, this softened the unhappy 
President’s mood. Jefferson was offered a chair. The two men, 
who had been intimate in Revolutionary days and in Paris, en- 
gaged in a friendly discussion of the topics of the day, and parted 
with mutual expressions of respect. 

Jefferson returned to Conrad’s boarding-house, where he had 
taken a suite of rooms. It was a commodious house, standing on a 
hill, the precipitate sides of which were covered with grass and 
shrubs in a natural state. The windows of Jefferson’s rooms com- 
manded a beautiful view of the surrounding country — the level 
plain between the hill and the Potomac through which the tree- 
lined Taber wound its course; and the man of Monticello could 
look down from his windows on the tulip-poplar trees, the mag- 
nolia, the azalea, the wild rose, the hawthorn. Characteristically 
enough, he had gone to Conrad’s because of the charms of the 
scenery. ‘There the man of the hour lived like the other lodgers, 
with the exception of having a drawing-room for the reception of 
visitors; eating at the common table with the others, at the foot 
of the table nearest the door and most remote from the fire. When 
Mrs. John Brown, wife of the Kentucky Senator, insisted that he 
sit at the head of the table, as the oldest man if not as the Vice- 
President, he waved the suggestion aside with a smile of depreca- 
tion, and there, in the coldest part of the room, he continued until 
he moved into the President’s house. But for Mrs. Brown and 
Mrs. Theodorus Bailey, wife of a Jeffersonian Congressman from 
New York, the mess table would have resembled ‘a refectory of 
monks.’ + Living under the same roof during the hectic weeks that 
followed were Gallatin who shared his room with Varnum, a 
Democrat from Massachusetts, Senator John Langdon, General 
Sam Smith of Maryland, Senator Abraham Baldwin of Georgia, 
Senator Wilson Carey Nicholas of Virginia, his brother, the 

1 Gallatin’s expression; Adams, Gallatin, 252-53. 


DEMOCRACY TRIUMPHANT 491 


Virginia Representative, and the Browns and Baileys. In the im- 
pending crisis Jefferson could scarcely have surrounded himself 
with a better board of strategy. There we will leave him for a 
while to take up the threads of the Federalist conspiracy to pre- 
vent his election and thwart the public will. 


II 


While Jefferson was calmly observing the development of the 
conspiracy, and Gouverneur Morris was reflecting on the absurdity 
of the human comedy, Alexander Hamilton sat in his office in New 
York writing feverishly to the leaders of his party. If he wrote in 
bitterness it was because he was fighting for the last vestige of his 
prestige as a leader. It had been ominous enough when he lost 
control of the party caucus and the leaders of the second class 
deserted him for Adams, but now, to his horror, he found the 
leaders of the first class scheming for the election of Burr, his pet 
aversion, to the Presidency. This was too much. Through the 
latter part of December, the indignant sparks flew from his fast- 
flying pen as he sought desperately to dissuade the conspirators 
who had been his faithful servitors. On the 16th he wrote Wolcott 
of his hope that ‘New England at least will not so far lose its head 
as to fall into this snare.’ Jefferson was infinitely preferable, be- 
cause ‘not so dangerous a man’ and because he had ‘pretensions 
to character.’ But Burr was a ‘bankrupt beyond redemption ex- 
cept by the plunder of his country.’ He was ‘the Catiline of 
America.’ Would Wolcott communicate these views to Marshall 
and Sedgwick and reply speedily?! The next day Hamilton and 
his erstwhile idolater, Otis, were both busy with their pens. The 
former, in an evident fever of anxiety, was writing again to Wol- 
cott. It was incredible that Federalists should be considering 
Burr. Within the last three weeks at his own table he had toasted 
the French Republic, the commissioners on both sides who had 

negotiated the peace, Bonaparte and Lafayette. Could anything 
_ have been more monstrous? ‘Alas, when will men consult their 
reasons rather than their passions?’ he asked. Elect Burr merely 
to mortify the Democrats by the defeat of Jefferson? ‘This dis- 
position reminds me of the conduct of the Dutch moneyed man, 

1 Hamilton’s Works, x, 392-93. 


492 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


who, from hatred of the old aristocracy, favored the admission of 
the French into Holland to overturn everything. Adieu to the 
Federal Troy if they once introduce this Grecian horse into their 
citadel.’ 1 

While Hamilton was writing thus to Wolcott, Otis, in Boston, 
was writing to Hamilton. ‘It is palpable,’ he wrote, ‘that to elect 
Burr is to cover the opposition with chagrin and to sow among 
them the seeds of morbid division.’ But how open communication 
with Burr? ‘We in Massachusetts do not know the man. You do. 
Please advise us.’ ? Hearing a few days later that Sedgwick was 
deep in the plot, Hamilton wrote him with almost hysterical 
earnestness. ‘For heaven’s sake, let not the Federalist party be 
responsible for the elevation of this man [Burr].’ * Two days more, 
and Hamilton was writing in New York; Harper, who had been 
his idolater, was similarly engaged in Baltimore. The former was 
writing Morris, seeking an understanding with Jefferson; Harper 
was writing Aaron Burr, proffering an alliance. ‘Jefferson or Burr? 
The former without all doubt,’ wrote Hamilton. ‘Let our situa- 
tion be improved to obtain from Jefferson assurances on certain 
points — the maintenance of the present system, especially on the 
cardinal articles of public credit —a navy, neutrality. Make 
any discreet use you think fit with this letter.’* Alas, the flimsiness 
of political friendship! At that very hour Harper was writing 
Burr that the contest would be settled in the House. ‘The lan- 
guage of the Democrats is that you will yield your pretensions to 
their favorite. .. . I advise you to take no step whatever by which 
the choice of the House . . . can be impeded or embarrassed. Keep 
the game perfectly in your own hands, but do not answer this 
letter, or any other that may be written to you by a Federal man, 
nor write to any of that party.’ 5 

No importunities from Hamilton were necessary in the case of 
Morris, who had taken the high ground ‘that since it was evidently 
the intention of our fellow citizens to make Mr. Jefferson their 
President, it seems proper to fulfill that intention.’ ® Such was his 
response to Hamilton, who responded gratefully to the loyalty of 


1 Hamilton’s Works, x, 393-97. 4 Tbid., 393-97. 
2 Parton, Burr, 1, 267. 5 McLaughlin; Matthew Lyon, 886. 
§ Hamilton’s Works, x, 397. § Parton, Burr, 1, 270, 


DEMOCRACY TRIUMPHANT 493 


one follower. ‘If there is a man in the world I ought to hate,’ he 
wrote, ‘it is Jefferson. With Burr I have always been personally 
well. But the public good must be paramount to every private 
consideration.’ ! The next day Hamilton was bearing down hard 
on James A. Bayard, a Federalist Representative from Delaware, 
with an excoriation of Burr as liable to overturn the government 
to extend his power. Was it possible that Federalists were think- 
ing of arrangements with a man of Burr’s character? ‘No en- 
gagement that may be made with him can be depended upon. 
While making it, he will laugh in his sleeve at the credulity of 
those with whom he makes it; and the first moment it suits his 
views to break it he will do so.’ ? At the same time he was appeal- 
ing to John Rutledge of South Carolina to assist in crushing the 
Federalists’ conspiracy as ‘a service to your country.’* That 
month, too, Senator Ross of Pennsylvania heard from New York. 
‘Mr. Burr is the last man in the United States to be supported by 
the Federalists,’ he read. Why not seek an understanding with 
Jefferson? 4 

But as December faded from the calendar, the colossal genius of 
Federalism found himself in a position of pitiful impotency and 
isolation. Morris and Jay shared his views, but even the New 
York friends of his youth, like Troup, were unresponsive, and most 
of the leaders, who had once responded gladly to his nod, were 
ignoring his frantic efforts and proceeding with their plans. On 
the day he was writing Bayard, two men knocked at the lodgings 
of Morris, and Robert Goodhue Harper and Senator Henry 
Latimer of Delaware appeared to electioneer the delightful cynic 
whose cynicism held so much of wisdom. The voluble Harper was 
the spokesman. Burr, he said, was his ‘intimate friend.’ It was 
advisable, he thought, to elect Burr ‘without asking or expecting 
any assurances respecting his future administration.’ There was 
enough in Burr’s temper and disposition to give ample security 
‘for a conduct hostile to the democratic spirit.’? Morris listened 
patiently, and dryly suggested the wisdom of the House suspend- 
ing its determination ‘until they can have more light as to the 
merit and probable conduct of the candidates.’ * Unable to see 


1 Hamilton’s Works, x, 401. 3 Ibid., 402-04. 8 Ibid., 404-05, 
4 Ibid., 405-07, 5 Morris, Diary, u, 397. 


494 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


with the majority of his party, Morris, who had touched life at so 
many points and in so many places, did not share in Hamilton’s 
rage. “Indeed, my dear friend,’ he wrote Robert Livingston about 
this time, ‘this farce of life contains nothing which should put us 
out of humor.’ ! With Harper making a personal canvass for Burr, 
Judge Samuel Sewall, of the Essex Junto, was urging Otis to stand 
for “a steady and decided vote of the Federal party for Mr. Burr,’ 
because it might at any rate prevent an election — a consumma- 
tion ‘most desirable.’ 2 

Meanwhile Burr, pretending preoccupation with the approach- 
ing nuptials of his brilliant Theodosia, was suavely simulating, if 
he did not feel, a distaste for the plan of his ‘intimate friend’ 
Harper. When the movement in his behalf was first launched, he 
wrote General Sam Smith that he would ‘disclaim all competition’ 
with Jefferson, that the Federalists ‘could entertain no wish for 
such an exchange,’ and that his friends would dishonor his views 
and insult his feelings ‘by a suspicion that I would submit to be in- 
strumental in counteracting the wishes and expectations of the 
United States.’ But eight days later, Harper had written him an 
encouraging letter on the prospects and he appears to have fol- 
lowed the admonition not to reply. After that — silence. 

At Conrad’s boarding-house the calmest man at the long table 
in the dining-room was Jefferson. He knew the plans of the oppo- 
sition to prevent an election or to elect Burr, and noted the gloom 
among his friends and the exultation of his enemies. He was quite 


calm. 


III 


January found Hamilton still feverishly busy at his writing- 
desk. His worst fears had, by this time, been confirmed. His 
bosom friends had smiled incredulously upon his protests against 
Burr. The conspiracy was spreading ominously. His voice had 
lost its potency, his sword its shimmer. Grimly he fought against 
fate. McHenry had been impressed with the propaganda for 
Burr. A number of the Federalist leaders had escaped from the 
frog ponds of the capital to enjoy Christmas festivities in Balti- 
more, and from these he heard but one opinion — Burr should be 

4 Morris, Diary, 1, 404. 2 Morison, Ctis, 1, 211-12. 


DEMOCRACY TRIUMPHANT 495 


supported. Burr’s letter to Smith? These worldly Federalists 
laughed derisively. He would not resent being elected by Federal- 
ist votes. Even McHenry thought that with Burr elected ‘we may 
flatter ourselves that he will not suffer the executive power to be 
frittered away.’ Still, he had misgivings. ‘Can we promise our- 
selves that he will not continue to seek and depend upon his own 
party for support?’! It was with these doubts in his mind that 
McHenry opened a letter from Hamilton, whom he worshiped. 
Here he found Burr denounced as ‘a profligate,’ as a ‘voluptuary,’ 
as ‘an extortionist’ in his profession, as insolvent and dangerous.? 
A word from Hamilton was enough, and McHenry joined his leader 
in combating the Federalist plans in Maryland — and not without 
effect. But with Senator William Hindman, who had been a sup- 
porter of Hamilton in the House, nothing could be done. He was 
aggressively for Burr.’ In early January, Pickering, still pitying 
himself, was not shocked at the idea of Burr’s election. The sug- 
gestion that ‘the federalist interest will not be so systematically 
opposed under Mr. Burr as under Jefferson’ impressed him. 
Then ‘in case of war with any European power there can be no 
doubt pea of the two would conduct it with most ability and 
energy.’ 

ee ae Bayard had sent a non-committal ae to Hamilton. 
He had found ‘a strong inclination of the majority’ of the Federal- 
ists to support Burr with the disposition growing. He ought, 
therefore, to have strong grounds for separating himself from the 
others. While their action could not bind him, it would be a pain- 
ful wrench to leave them. Still, ‘the magnitude of the subject for- 
bids the sacrifice of strong conviction.’ As the pen of Bayard 
traveled over the page, the conspirators were moving about him, 
for he wrote in the House of Representatives.® In truth, all Hamil- 
ton’s advices were disturbing. Former Senator Gunn of Georgia, 
~ in sympathy with him, was afraid ‘some of our friends have com- 
mitted themselves by writing improperly to Burr.’® Even John 
Rutledge, while disgusted at the idea of either Jefferson or Burr in 
the Presidency, found his party associates convinced that ‘Burr 


1 King’s Works, m1, 363. 2 Steiner, 485-88. 8 Tbid., 489-90. 
4 King’s Works (Pickering to King), 11, 366. 
5 Parton, Burr, 1, 272-73, 6 Iind., 274. 


496 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


will be the least mischief,’ and that his election would be ‘prodi- 
giously afflicting to the Virginia faction and must disjoint the 
party.!’ 

It is easy to imagine Hamilton laying down the letter of Rut- 
ledge with a frown, to open one which had arrived from Sedgwick 
in the same mail, to get a greater shock. It wasa vigorous plea for 
Burr. The author found it ‘very evident that the Jacobins dislike 
Mr. Burr as President’ and that ‘he hates them for the preference 
given to his rival.’ He had ‘expressed displeasure over the publica- 
tion of his letter to General Smith.’ Would not ‘this jealousy and 
distrust and dislike...every day more and more increase and 
more and more widen the breach between them?’ Would not the 
election of Burr by the Federalists cause ‘incurable’ wounds? 
Then again, ‘to what evils should we expose ourselves by the 
choice of Burr, which we should escape by the election of Jeffer- 
son?’ ‘True, given an opportunity, Burr would be more likely to 
become a ‘usurper’ — but what of that? 2 

About this time, in the middle of the month, the Federalists met 
to determine on their course. The caucus was not entirely har- 
monious, but the Burr sentiment was overwhelming. Shocked and 
inwardly enraged at the disaffection of his friends, Hamilton now 
redoubled his efforts, and in a ‘very, very confidential’ letter to 
Bayard dissected the character of Burr, demolished the arguments 
of his Federalist supporters, and pronounced J efferson far superior 
in real ability. To this he gave a personal touch — something he 
had hitherto held back. ‘It is past all doubt,’ he said, ‘that he has 
blamed me for not having improved the situation I once was in to 
change the government; that when answered that this could not 
have been done without guilt, he replied, “‘Les grandes Ames se 
soucient peu des petits moraux”’; and when told that the thing was 
never practical from the genius and situation of the country, he 
answered, “That depends on the estimate we form of the human 
passions, and of the means of influencing them.”’ Does this prove 
that Mr. Burr would consider a scheme of usurpation as vision- 
ary?’® Four days after sending this letter to Bayard, Hamilton 
was writing Morris of the inability of the conspirators to get as- 
surances from Burr, who complained that it would injure him with 

1 Parton, Burr, 1, 274-75, 2 Ibid., 277-78, * Hamilton’s Works, x, 412-19. 


DEMOCRACY TRIUMPHANT 497 


his friends. ‘Depend upon it,’ he warned, ‘men never played a 
more foolish game than will do the Federalists if they support 
Burr.’ + But Hamilton was striving against the basest, lowest in- 
stincts of his party. One of his Boston followers was writing King 
at this very time that he favored Burr because ‘his opposition 
heretofore’ had ‘arisen from ambitious motives,’ and because he 
was ‘not as honest in his politics as Jefferson.’ 2 No one was a 
stouter contender against Hamilton’s decent patriotic impulses 
than Sedgwick, who was moved by the motives just indicated.’ 
No one knew it better than Hamilton, but he persisted. ‘I never 
was so much mistaken,’ he wrote Sedgwick, ‘as I shall be if our 
friends in the event of their success do not rue the preference they 
will give to that Catiline.’4 Fighting desperately, Hamilton 
looked clear-eyed upon the repudiation of his leadership of the 
party into which he had breathed the breath of life and given the 
dignity of power by the prestige of his genius. Among his friends 
he made no secret of his depression, admitting to them that his 
“influence with the federal party was wholly gone’ and that he 
‘could no longer be useful.’ > Had he created a Frankenstein to 
destroy not only himself but his policies and country? he won- 
dered. 

All through that month there was only serenity at Conrad’s 
boarding-house in Washington. Thoroughly informed of every 
move made by the enemy, Jefferson discussed the situation in the 
evenings with Gallatin, the Nicholases, and General Smith. Such 
was his imperturbable temperament that in the midst of the in- 
tense excitement he was able to write to one friend of a meteoro- 
logical diary from Quebec, and to another on a similar one from 
Natchez. His cause was in the keeping of Gallatin, who was 
quietly checking up on all members of the House, closing his own 
ranks, preparing for every possible contingency, and concluding 
that ‘the intention of the desperate leaders must be absolute 
usurpation and the overthrow of our Constitution.’? Thus Jan- 
uary passed, and February came with its fateful possibilities, 

1 Hamilton’s Works, x, 419-20. 

3 King’s Works (J. Hale to King), m1, 372. 

3 Ibid. (Sedgwick to King), 455. ‘: 4 Hamilton’s Works, x, 420. 
5 King’s Works (Troup to King), m, 891. 


6 Jefferson’s Works (to Hugh Williamson), x, 188; (to William Dunbar), 191. 
7 Adams, Gallatin (Gallatin to his wife), 257., 


498 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


IV 


As the time for the contest approached, the village capital over- 
flowed with visitors of stern visage. The boarding-houses packed 
with members of Congress, these onlookers found lodgment in 
Georgetown and in Alexandria. Notwithstanding the bitterness of 
the fight there was no trouble — due to stern repression. A little 
spark would have caused an explosion. The American people had 
determined on Jefferson, and it was no longer a secret that forces 
were at work to defeat the public will. Some of the Federalist 
papers deprecated the attempt to elect Burr with Federalist 
votes. The New York ‘Commercial Advertiser’ made vigorous 
protest in denunciation of the conspirators. ‘They are now taking 
the ground which the Democrats have occupied and descending to 
the baseness of supporting their cause by railing, abuse and scur- 
rility. Nothing can be less politic or honorable. It is the duty of 
good citizens to acquiesce in the election and be tranquil. It is 
proper that Mr. Jefferson should be made Chief Magistrate.’ } 
The same note was struck by the New York ‘Gazette.’ ‘Many 
advocate the support of Mr. Burr,’ it said. ‘In matters of such 
importance it is idle to suffer our passions to get the better of our 
reason; and in statesmanship it would be particularly culpable 
from such puerile motives to risk the welfare of the nation. ... 
Bad as both these men [Jefferson and Burr] are, there is no com- 
parison between them.’ ? But the organ of the Essex Junto was 
openly advocating Burr’s election. The ‘Centinel’ of Boston 
teemed with Burr propaganda. ‘The people of New England have 
yet faith to believe that a good tree cannot bring forth bad fruit, 
nor vice versa,’ it said. ‘They think the stock from which Mr. 
Jefferson has sprung to be bad because his works are known to be 
so; and... that whatever Mr. Burr may be reported to be he will 
eventually turn out good; as he is the grandson of the dignified 
Edwards, the great American luminary of Divinity, and a son of 
President Burr who was also a burning and shining light in the 
churches.’* At times it fell into verse: 


1 Commercial Advertiser, January 17, 1801. 
* Reprinted in Connecticut Courant, January 26, 1801. 
3 Centinel, January 28, 1801. 


DEMOCRACY TRIUMPHANT 499 


‘Stop ere your civic feasts begin; | 
Wait till the votes are all come in; 
Perchance amidst this mighty stir 
Your monarch may be Colonel Burr.’ ! 


A correspondent from Washington was quoted approvingly on the 
plan to support Burr — ‘the expediency of which course is so pal- 
pable to common sense... that I am astonished any Federal man 
should hesitate upon the subject.’ 2 And the ‘Centinel’ expressed 
the hope that it would be able ‘by Saturday next to announce 
either that the people will have another opportunity to elect a 
Federal President; or that the House, rejecting a theoretical and 
experimental philosopher, will prefer, as a very respectable mem- 
ber of Congress describes Mr. Burr, “a practical gentleman who 
will have judgment, taste and genius enough to appreciate the 
usefulness of our federal fabric, and nerve enough to preserve its 
integrity.”’’ 3 

There was no longer any doubt that the Federalist hot-heads 
were ready for usurpation and revolutionary measures. It was 
known to every Democrat of any consequence in the country. 
Gallatin, counting noses, had no fear of desertions from the Jef- 
fersonian ranks. The real danger, as the little conclave at Con- 
rad’s saw it, was the prevention of an election, and Gallatin was 
certain that, to prevent this calamity, a Federalist from Maryland 
and Morris of Vermont would go over to Jefferson. A plan to meet 
this contingency was drawn up by Gallatin and accepted by the 
chief. More sinister still was the threat, commonly heard, that 
should the Federalists succeed in preventing an election, they 
would pass a law placing the Presidency in the hands of Marshall 
or some other official. This the Democrats were prepared to resist 
by physical force. To prevent this usurpation, the Jeffersonians 
notified Governor M’Kean of Pennsylvania and Governor Monroe 
of Virginia, who were prepared to march troops instantly upon the 
capital ‘for the purpose, not of promoting, but of preventing 
revolution and the shedding of a single drop of blood.’ 4 A careful 
survey convinced Gallatin that this scheme of usurpation would 
not have mustered more than twenty votes among the Federalist 


1 Centinel, January 7, 1801. 8 Ibid., February 11, 1801. 8 Thid, 
4 Adams, Gallatin, 248-51, 


500 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


members. Only Henry Lee, ‘a desperate character,’ and Roger 
Griswold of Connecticut, a bigot, appeared to Gallatin to be really 
favorable to such a monstrous measure. Even so the rumor 
spread, and it was said that fifteen hundred men in Virginia and 
Maryland had agreed in the event a usurper were placed in the 
Presidency to move on Washington to assassinate him.! 

Jefferson had other plans in view, which he conveyed only to 
Madison and Monroe — to call a convention to reorganize the 
Government and amend the Constitution, but he concealed this 
from Gallatin.? The Gallatin plan, with its military feature, leaked 
out, causing some uneasiness among the conspirators, who pro- 
ceeded, however, with their plans. The ‘Centinel’ boasted that 
Federalists had no fear of Southern and Western fighters. ‘Our 
General [Burr] if called upon can assure them that he has seen 
southern regiments in former times and knows what they are com- 
posed of. § 

Meanwhile the Federalists proceeded with their plans. Burr, 
concealing himself in Albany, was maintaining a discreet silence, 
and on February Ist, Jefferson wrote him a letter. At no time 
had he any confidence in Burr’s political honesty or reliability. 
During the two Federalist Administrations he had observed that, 
whenever a great military or diplomatic appointment was to be 
made, Burr had hurried to Philadelphia and was ‘always at 
market if they wanted him.’ Jefferson had thought it wise to re- 
main rather distant.‘ But he was too sagacious to reveal his dis- 
trust at this juncture. He had no thought of giving Burr any ex- 
cuse for treachery, and enemies had been busy with a forged let- 
ter bearing Jefferson’s signature setting forth uncomplimentary 
opinions. He wrote to call attention to the forgery and denounce 
it. ‘It was to be expected,’ he wrote, ‘that the enemy would 
endeavor to sow tares between us that they might divide us 
and our friends.’ If the letter was ever answered, the reply has 
been lost. | 

On the day Jefferson sat in his room at Conrad’s writing Burr, 
Gouverneur Morris’s morning slumber was interrupted by two 


1 Adams, Gallatin, 248-51. 

2 Ibid. | 

* Centinel, February 18, 1801, before the result of the election was known. 
¢ Anas, I, 381. 


DEMOCRACY TRIUMPHANT 501 


visitors who wished to discuss with him the organization of Burr’s 
Administration. ‘Laughable enough under the circumstances 
which now exist,’ chuckled the cynic.! Two days later, still serene, 
Jefferson was writing Dr. Caspar Wistar of some bones recently 
discovered which the Doctor wished for the museum. The candi- 
date had taken the trouble to write Chancellor Livingston, and the 
reply was inspired by the latter’s letter in answer. With the village 
capital crowded, with talk of revolution, usurpation, assassina- 
tion, he wrote at length. Perhaps it would be better to ask only 
ior the bones missing from the museum’s collection, as the town 
where they were found would probably be loath to part with them 
at all. Even then the philosopher and scientist was not wholly lost 
in the politician. 

In New York, Hamilton, having gone his limit, was no longer 
writing letters. The indifference of his erstwhile followers had 
left him depressed and bitter. Then, one day at the Tontine 
Coffee-House, he had an opportunity to renew his warning in the 
most dramatic manner. Wolcott had resigned from the Cabinet, 
his treachery still unsuspected by Adams, to be wined and dined 
by the Federalist members of Congress in Washington, and toasted 
by the merchants of Philadelphia and New York. After the regu- 
lar toasts had been given at the Tontine and volunteers were in 
order, Hamilton rose, and in his most impressive manner pro- 
posed: “May our government never fall a prey to the dreams of a 
Condorcet NOR THE VICES OF A CaTILINE.’? ‘The vices of a 
Catiline’ was the one expression remembered by the diners as they 
poured out into the streets. 

The next day the balloting was to begin. On the day of the 
dinner at the Tontine the ‘Commercial Advertiser’ predicted the 
election of Burr on the second ballot; and that same day Repre- 
sentative William Cooper was writing a friend of the determination 
of the Federalists ‘to run Burr perseveringly’ and to ‘leave the 
consequences to those who have hitherto been his friends.’ 4 At 
Conrad’s boarding-house all was serene. 


1 Morris, Diary, 11, 403. 

2 Jefferson’s Works, x, 196-97. 

* Connecticut Courant, February 11, 1801. 
¢ Parton, Burr, 1, 288. 


502 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


Vv 

In a blinding snowstorm the lawmakers and spectators fought 
their way to the Capitol on Wednesday morning, the 11th. Nature 
spread a white mantle over the crudities of the village as though to 
dress it becomingly for the great day. The great plain between 
the foot of the hill and the river was covered with a spotless sheet, 
and even the shop of the shoemaker and the home of the wash- 
woman took on the appearance of beauty. No one minded the 
storm, not even Joseph H. Nicholson of Maryland, who, though 
bedridden with fever, insisted on being carried through the storm 
to cast his ballot for Jefferson. The electoral votes being counted 
in a joint session of the two houses, the members of the House re- 
tired to their own chamber to elect a President. The crowded 
gallery was ordered cleared. The visitors, grumbling loudly, filed 
out into the corridors. When Samuel Harrison Smith, editor of 
the ‘National Intelligencer,’ who had established his paper in the 
capital on the advice of Jefferson, insisted on remaining, he was 
angrily ordered out by Theodore Sedgwick, the Speaker. Ar- 
rangements were thereupon made by the Jeffersonians to keep 
Smith informed hourly of the fortunes of the fight. In a committee 
room off the chamber lay Nicholson on a bed, burning with fever, 
an anxious wife at his side to give him water and medicine. Even 
the conspirators could not restrain their admiration. ‘It is a 
chance that this kills him,’ wrote Otis. ‘I would not thus expose 
myself for any President on earth.’ ! The stricken Democrat was 
not there, however, against the wishes of his wife, who had the 
fighting spirit of a Spartan woman. 

The first ballot found Jefferson with eight States — Burr with 
six — nine necessary to a choice. Another ballot immediately — 
the same result. A third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh —no 
change. As each ballot was taken, a teller from Maryland entered 
the little committee room where Nicholson lay fighting the fever, 
his head supported by the arm of his wife. He was awakened from 
his fitful sleep, a pencil was put in his trembling fingers, and with 
his wife’s aid in guiding the pencil the name of Jefferson was 
written. The pencil fell from his hand — he slept again.? At the 

4 Morison, Otis, 1, 207-08, | 4 Mrs. Smith, 24, 


DEMOCRACY TRIUMPHANT 503 


end of the eighth ballot a motion to vote again in an hour pre- 
vailed. There was little electioneering — men’s minds were made 
up. Only a buzz of conversation, some laughter. 

The ninth ballot, the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, four- 
teenth, fifteenth ballots — and no change. Darkness had long 
since fallen on snow-covered Washington. Bed-clothing, blankets, 
pillows, had been brought in. The Federalists had determined to 
hold on without adjournment. At nine o’clock the sixteenth ballot 
brought no change. At ten o’clock the seventeenth, at eleven the 
eighteenth — and no change. The motion was made to adjourn 
until Thursday, only to be voted down. At midnight the nineteenth 
ballot was taken, with the lines unbroken. By this time the mem- 
bers were slipping off to cloak and committee rooms between bal- 
lots to sleep, and some slept in their chairs. Asa ballot was called, 
it was ‘ludicrous to see them running from committee rooms with 
night caps on.’ 1 The crowd in the corridors dwindled, a few stub- 
bornly held on. Every hour a messenger waded laboriously 
through the heavy snow to the home of the editor of ‘The Intel- 
ligencer’ with the results. No sleep in that house that night. 
When the knock at the door was heard, the editor’s wife, her heart 
beating audibly, as she thought, could scarcely open to receive the 
paper.” 

At one o’clock another ballot — then at two. Nature was be- 
ginning to claim its toll when it was agreed not to vote again until 
four o'clock. After that the ballots were taken hourly throughout 
the night. When the twenty-seventh ballot was taken at eight 
o'clock and the motion was made to vote no more until noon, 
_ there were no protests. The vote at noon found the opposing lines 
unbroken. The House adjourned until eleven o’clock on Friday 
— the next day. 

Friday: larger crowds about the Capitol. Nicholson still on his 
bed. When the twenty-ninth ballot showed no change, an ad- 
journment was taken until noon on Saturday. 

Meanwhile the participants in the struggle were sending out 
meager reports on the results. While the first ballots were being 
taken on Wednesday, Jefferson had written Tench Coxe: ‘For 
some time since, a single individual has said he would by his vote 

1 Commercial Advertiser, February 16, 1801. 2 Mrs. Smith, 24, 


504 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON — 


make up the ninth State. On Saturday last he changed, and it 
stands at present eight one way, six the other, and two divided. 
Which of the two will be elected, and whether either, I deem per- 
fectly problematical; and my mind has long since been equally 
made up for either of the three events.’! Otis, writing his wife, 
was more interested in the scene at the sick bed than in conjec- 
tures.2 Gallatin wrote Mrs. Gallatin of the results without com- 
ment, other than that he had slept from eight o’clock until noon 
on Thursday morning.® Saturday found the lines still holding, but 
with the conspirators subjected to a heavy and disturbing fire from 
outside. An imposing petition from Federalists in Maryland had 
been sent John Chew Thomas declaring that two thirds of his con- 
stituents favored Jefferson. Gallatin did ‘not know what effect 
they would have,’ 4 and the thing that worried the Federalists was 
that they knew no better. Some of these were finding the back- 
fire distressing. Others were openly disgusted with Burr. ‘Had 
Burr done anything for himself, he would long ere this have been 
President,’ wrote Cooper of New York.’ It was clearly time to 
push the contest. Thus, on Saturday three ballots were taken 
without results, and the House adjourned until noon Monday. 

Meanwhile, Jefferson, presiding over the Senate, surrounded by 
hatred and excitement, presented an unruffled front, an un- 
touched temper. From time to time he could hear the angry dis- 
cussions of his enemies, but he made no sign. His impartiality 
was beyond question. ‘A spectator,’ wrote a contemporary, 
‘who watched his countenance would never have surmised that he 
had any personal interest in the impending event.’ ® From the 
Capitol he walked like one unconcerned back to Conrad’s, enjoy- 
ing the snow. Some of the politicians sought to wring concessions 
from him to gain support, but he was adamant. General Sam 
Smith, without his authority or knowledge, entered into a nego- 
tiation, which had no effect beyond furnishing the groundwork for 
the charge of his enemies in history that he had made arrange- 
ments. As far as we know he was openly approached by but one — 
and he was acting on the suggestion of Alexander Hamilton, 


1 Jefferson’s Works, x, 198-99. 2 Morison, Otis, 1, 207-08. 
3 Adams, Gallatin, 260-61. 4 Tbid., 261-62. 
§ Parton, Burr, 1, 288. 6 Mrs. Smith, 23, - 


DEMOCRACY TRIUMPHANT 505 


One day, as Jefferson was descending the steps of the Capitol, 
he met Gouverneur Morris and they paused to exchange compli- 
ments. Differing as widely as the poles, they had enjoyed their 
social contacts in Paris. The conversation turned naturally to the 
contest, and Morris observed, significantly, that the opposition 
to Jefferson’s election on the part of some was the fear that he 
would turn all Federalists out of office, put down the navy, and 
wipe out the debt. All that was necessary to his election was the 
assurance that none of these steps would be taken. ‘I must leave 
the world to judge the course I mean to pursue by that which I 
have pursued hitherto,’ Jefferson replied. ‘I believe it my duty to 
be passive and silent during the present contest. I shall certainly 
make no terms, and shall never go into the office of President by 
capitulation, nor with my hands tied by any conditions which will 
hinder me from pursuing the measures which I shall deem for the 
public good.’ The two parted in the best of feeling. 

The crisis was now approaching. Public sentiment was assert- 
ing itself unmistakably, and statesmen could hear afar off the 
cracking of the whips. The Jeffersonians would clearly not budge. 
Even Nicholson was recovering instead of sinking under the ex- 
posure and excitement. The Federalists in their caucuses were 
breaking up after stormy meetings. It was agreed that nothing 
was left but desperate measures, and, while but few urged their 
adoption, few openly disapproved. Burr was an ever-increasing 
torment. Only his codperation was needed, said Bayard after- 
ward, to have won. ‘By deceiving one man (a great blockhead) 
and tempting two (not incorruptible), he might have secured a 
majority of the States.’! But Burr was in Albany, silent as the 
sphinx and inactive as a mummy. 

Over Sunday the leaders caucused and cursed. When the 
House met on Monday, Gallatin understood that Bayard was 
going to vote for Jefferson and end the fight. But on the one 
ballot taken on Monday, he remained with Burr. ‘But it is sup- 
posed,’ wrote Gallatin to his father-in-law, ‘that the cause of delay 
is to make an attempt on his party and some others to prevail on 
the whole Federal party to come over.’ 2 

The conferences continued on Monday and by night a decision 

‘1 Parton, Burr; Letter to Hamilton. 3 Adams, Gallatin, 262. 


506 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


had been reached. Nothing could be gained by fighting for a man 
who would not fight. The public was in an ugly mood. Hamilton’s 
friends, like Bayard, were feeling a little ashamed of themselves. 
On Tuesday a crowd was packed in the corridors of the Capitol 
and in front of the building. Weary men in petulant mood pushed 
their way through these farmers, mechanics, and politicians to the 
House. A vote was immediately taken. Morris, Federalist from 
Vermont, withdrew, permitting Matthew Lyon to cast the vote of 
the State for Jefferson. The Maryland Federalists cast blank 
ballots — permitting the Democrats to put their State in the Jef- 
ferson column. Bayard, after much meandering, finally satisfied 
Hamilton by casting a blank, which, being the only vote to which 
his State was entitled, left Delaware out entirely. And Theodore 
Sedgwick, in a rage, was forced formally to announce the election 
of Thomas Jefferson. The throng in the corridors and in front of 
the Capitol gave way to noisy rejoicing, and the conspirators 
hurried to their lodgings to escape the scowls of the populace. 


VI 


While most of them hurried home, three members of the 
House, including two of the vanquished, with Thomas Pinckney 
as spokesman, made their way with many jests, we may be sure, 
up the slushy Avenue, between the frog ponds, to the President’s 
house to notify John Adams that his successor had been chosen. 
No record of their reception remains, but the imagination can sup- 
ply the want. Nor is there any record that Adams sent a note of 
congratulation to the victor. Those were the days when ‘The 
Duke of Braintree’s’ morbid vanity was suffering keenly the 
flings of outrageous fortune. 

Two days later, the same committee formally notified Jefferson 
of his election and was asked to convey a gracious response to the 
House. Meanwhile, unflurried and unhurried, he went his way; 
_ appearing in the Senate, as usual to preside, and continuing to oc- 
cupy the foot of the table at Conrad’s boarding-house. He had 
long since determined upon Madison for the head of the Cabinet 
and Gallatin for the Treasury, gigantic figures compared with 
_ those who had occupied these posts after Jefferson and Hamilton 
1 Annals, February 21, 1801. 


DEMOCRACY TRIUMPHANT 507 


had left them in the days of Washington. The other positions were 
filled during the two weeks intervening between the election and 
the inauguration. 

On Saturday before his inauguration on Wednesday, Jefferson 
appeared for the last time in the Senate to withdraw from his post 
there in a farewell address. There before him sat men who hated 
him venomously, but the suave, serene victor took leave as though 
departing with sorrow from a cherished circle of congenial souls. 
Mistakes he had probably made, but he had sought to ‘observe 
impartial justice,’ and his measurable success had been due to the 
generosity and uniform courtesy of the members. Could he but 
carry to his new station such support as he had received from the 
Senate, he would ‘consider it as commencing under the happiest 
auspices.’ In tendering his ‘cordial and respectful adieux,’ he 
wished for all both health and happiness. With a courtly bow he 
descended from the rostrum, and passed out of the chamber. 

On Monday, Gouverneur Morris, chairman of the committee 
named to make response, reported an answer matching the court- 
liness of Jefferson’s farewell. It lamented ‘the loss of that intelli- 
gence, attention, and impartiality’ with which Jefferson had pre- 
sided, and expressed appreciation of the kindly expressions on the 
Senate. Then, as Morris proceeded, there was a savage wagging of 
heads among the die-hards, as he read: ‘In the confidence that 
your official conduct will be directed to those great objects [the 
honor and interests of the country] — a confidence derived from 
past events, we repeat to you, sir, the assurance of our Constitu- 
tional support in your future administration.’ Instantly an ir- 
reconcilable was on his feet with a motion to strike out the words, 
‘derived from past events.’ The roll was called. The motion was 
lost by a vote of 9 to 19. The intolerant Tracy and Ross voted 
with the nine, but Morris carried some of his party with him.! 
The next day Morris reported Jefferson’s reply — a gesture of ap- 
preciation. 

As the day of the inauguration approached, great crowds began 
to pour into the drab little capital from the surrounding country. 
In the President’s house and in the Senate there was feverish 
activity. Early in the session, the Federalists, realizing that their 
. 1 Annals, March 2, 1801. | 


508 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON 


power was over in the executive and legislative branches, sought 
to maintain themselves and provide for their favorites through the 
creation of many Federal judgeships. The purpose was trans- 
parent. The Democrats had fought the measure without avail. 
All that now remained was for Adams to pack the courts with 
partisans as narrow and intolerant as those who had for ten years 
been delivering common party harangues from the Bench. With 
the joyous visitors wading the muddy streets in holiday mood, with 
Jefferson closeted with his friends at Conrad’s, the Senate was 
busy confirming these partisan Judges, and in the Executive De- 
partment they were busy signing the commissions. Night came — 
and John Marshall remained in his office making them out. 

To this drama of hate, Adams gave a touch of irony in selecting 
the beneficiaries of his generosity. Wolcott had left him but a little 
while before. Through four years he had played the game of 
Adams’s enemies, presenting all the while a smiling countenance 
to his chief. We have seen him lingering on in the citadel after 
Pickering and McHenry had been thrown from the battlements, 
to wig-wag secret messages to the enemy in New York. But 
Adams had suspected nothing. Moved by an impulse of gratitude, 
he offered Wolcott a life position on the Bench, and that consum- 
mate actor, smiling still, sent the assurance that ‘gratitude to 
benefactors is among the most amiable... of social obligations,’ 4 
and accepted. There is something of pathos to the Adams of the 
sunset. Something of pathos and inspiration, too — for, to the 
disgust of the inner circle of his party, he made John Marshall 
Chief Justice of the United States, and thus, unwittingly, saved | 
the better part of Federalism from the wreckage of the temple, to 
fight on through many years to come. 


VII 


The morning of inauguration day found the entire nation march- 
ing in the streets, exultant Democrats following the fife and drum, 
singing and shouting hosannas. Merchants locked their doors, 
mechanics left their work-benches, clerks laid down their pens, 
farmers deserted their homes for the towns, and from Boston to 
Savannah men and women celebrated with an enthusiasm not ap- 
proached since the celebration of the peace in 1783. 

1 Gibbs, 1, 497 


DEMOCRACY TRIUMPHANT 509 


In Washington, the thunder of artillery ushered in the day. As 
it shook the heavens, an embittered old man with a sour counte- 
nance sat far back in his coach as it bumped and splashed its way 
through the mire and over the stumps of the Baltimore road, for at 
four o’clock in the morning John Adams had slipped out of the 
house of the Presidents and hurried away, rather than remain to 
extend the ordinary courtesies to his successor. ‘You have no 
idea,’ wrote Gallatin to his wife, ‘of the meanness, indecency, 
almost insanity of his conduct, especially of late. But he is fallen 
and not dangerous. Let him be forgotten.’ ! Somewhere in hiding, 
or in flight, was Theodore Sedgwick, Speaker of the House, who 
could not bear to witness the triumph of a foe. 

That morning Jefferson remained quietly at Conrad’s, receiving 
friends. As he entered the dining-room for breakfast, the wife of 
Senator Brown rose impulsively and offered him her seat. With 
an appreciative smile he declined and sat down as usual at the end 
of the table near the door.? 

At ten o’clock there was a flurry among the men, women, and 
children standing reverently in front of Jefferson’s lodgings, 
when, with a swinging stride, companies of riflemen and artillery 
from Alexandria paraded before the boarding-house. At noon, 
dressed plainly, with nothing to indicate the dignity of his posi- 
tion, Jefferson stepped out of Conrad’s, accompanied by citizens 
and members of Congress, and walked to the Capitol. As he 
passed the threshold, there was a thunder of artillery. When he 
entered the little Senate Chamber, the Senators and Representa- 
tives rose, and Aaron Burr, now Vice-President, left his seat — all 
standing until Jefferson sat down in the chair he had occupied 
until a week before. On his right hand, Burr; on his left, Mar- 
shall. Only a little while, and Burr, arrested for treason at the in- 
stigation of Jefferson, would be tried by Marshall at Richmond. 

After a moment, Jefferson rose and read a conciliatory address, 
in a tone scarcely audible in the tiny room.? ‘We are all Republi- 
cans; we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would 
wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its Republican form, let 
them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which 
error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to com- 

1 Adams, Gallatin, 265. 8 Mrs, Smith, 12, 3 Ibid., 26. 


510 JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON . 


bat it.’ As he concluded, he turned to Marshall, his Hamilton of 
the future. The Chief Justice administered the oath. It was over. 
The festivities of ’83 had celebrated the achievement of the right 
of the American people to form their own government and make 
their own laws. The roar of artillery as the new President emerged 
from the Capitol meant that the real American Revolution had 
triumphed, and definitely determined that this should be a demo- 
cratic republic. 

In the streets and public-houses that afternoon there was re- 
joicing, shouting, singing, laughing, drinking. Even the more 
tolerant of the vanquished fraternized with the victors, and the 
wife of the editor of the Jeffersonian organ ! poured tea for Gou- 
verneur Morris, Jonathan Dayton, and James A. Bayard. For 
the moment ‘all were Republicans, all were Federalists.’ That 
night Washington saw its first illumination. . 


Lumbering along the wretched mud roads in his coach rode 
Adams, the reverberations of the artillery peal of the morning still 
hammering on his nerves, meditating bitterly on the treachery of 
men.... Somewhere in hiding, Sedgwick — cursing the fates. ... 
And somewhere in New York, Alexander Hamilton was tasting 
the bitter fruits of the victory he had fought to win for his greatest 
opponent. From his window he could see the marching men and 
he could hear the pans of triumph. The brilliant party he had 
moulded was in ruins — his leadership scorned by the crawling 
creatures who had shone only in the reflected light of his bril- 
liance. He was alone — isolated. ... A little while and he would 
write Morris, ‘What can I do better than withdraw from the 
scene? Every day proves to me more and more that this American 
world was not made for me.’ *... A few months, and he would be 
describing himself as a ‘disappointed politician’ in a letter to 
Pinckney requesting melon seeds for his garden and parroquets 
for his daughter’... Four years — and before Burr’s pistol he 
would fall on the banks of the Hudson one tragic summer morning, 
-.. Some years more, and a visitor to the home of the retired sage 
of Monticello would see in the hall a marble bust of Hamilton — 
the tribute of one great man to another. _ 0) ee 

4 Mrs. Smith, _4 Hamilton’s Works, x, 425, 8 Ibid., x, 444, 


DEMOCRACY TRIUMPHANT 511. 


The eighteenth century witnessed their Plutarchian battles; 
the twentieth century uncovers at the graves at Monticello and in 
Trinity Churchyard — but the spirits of Jefferson and Hamilton 
still stalk the ways of men — still fighting. 


THE END 


9 fall. 


rhs ‘ 





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Moraan, Grorce. Life of James Monroe. Boston, 1921. 

Morison, Samurn Ensor. Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis. 2 vols. 
Boston, 1913. 

Morris, ANNE Cary. The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris. 2 vols. New 
York, 1888. 

Morris, Gouverneur. See A. C. Morris. 

Morris, Rosert. See E. P. Oberholtzer. 

‘Morse, Anson Dantet. Parties and Party Leaders. Boston, 1923. 

Morse, Anson Exy. The Federalist Party in Massachusetts to the Year 1800. 
Princeton, 1909. 

Morssz, Joun T. Thomas Jefferson. Boston, 1899. John Adams. Boston, 1899. 

Mouzzry, Davip. Thomas Jefferson. New York, 1919. s 

Myers, Gustavus. The History of Tammany Hall. New York, 1917. ' 

OxrrHourzer, E. P. Robert Morris, Patriot and Financier. New York, 1903. 

Ourver, Frepertck Scort. Alexander Hamilton: An Essay on the American 
Union. New York, 1907. 

Or1s, Harrison Gray. See S. E. Morison. 

Parsons, ToEoruitus. Memoir of Theophilus Parsons. Boston, 1859. . 

Parton, James. Life of Thomas Jefferson. 2 vols. Boston, 1874. Life and Times 
of Aaron Burr. 2 vols. Boston, 1892. 


516 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Payne, Grorcre Henry. History of Journalism in the United States. New York, 
1920. 
PELLEW, Grorcr. John Jay. Boston, 1899. : 
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Pinckney, Tuomas. See C. C. Pinckney. 
PurceLn, Ricuarp J. Connecticut in Transition, 1775-1818. Washington, 1918, 
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Ranvopn, Sarau N. Domestic Life of Thomas J efferson. New York, 1871. 
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 517 


Woopsury, James A. Political Parties and Party Problems in the United States. 
_ New York, 1914. 


CoNTEMPORARY PAMPHLETS 


Anonymous. Serious Facts Opposed to ‘Serious Considerations’ and the ‘Voice of 
Warning to Religious Republicans.’ (Pamphlets attacking the religion of Jeffer- 
son.) New York, 1800. 

BEckey, Joun James. Address to the People of the United States, with an Epit- 
ome and Vindication of the Lnfe and Character of Thomas Jefferson. Philadel- 
phia, 1800. 

Bisuop, ABRAHAM. An Oration on the Extent and Power of Political Delusions. 
Newark, 1800. 

‘Bystanper.’ A Series of Letters on the Subject of the ‘Legislative Choice’ of 
Electors in Maryland. Baltimore, 1800. 

CauLENnpDER, J.T. Sedgwick & Company: A Key to the 6 per cent Cabinet. Phila- 
delphia, 1798. The Honorable Mr. Sedgwick’s Last Will and Testament, New- 
ark, 1800. The Prospect Before Us. Richmond, 1800. 

CuEETHAM, James. An Answer to Alexander Hamilton’s Letter concerning the 
Public Conduct and Character of John Adams. New York, 1800. 

Consett, Wiiutam. Observations on the Emigration of Dr. Joseph Priestley. 

Philadelphia, 1794. A Bone to Gnaw for Democrats. Philadelphia, 1795. 

Coxs, Tencu. Strictures upon the Letter Imputed to Mr. Jefferson Addressed to 
Mr. Mazzei. Philadelphia, 1800. 

Frnno, Joun Warp. Desultory Reflections on the New Political Aspects of Public 
Affairs. New York, 1800. 

Hovexinson. Letters on Emigration. London, 1794. 

Situ, Witu1am. Address to his Constituents. Philadelphia, 1794. 

Tartor, Joun. An Examination of the Late Proceedings of Congress, Respecting 
the Official Conduct of the Secretary of the Treasury. Philadelphia, 1793. 


CoNTEMPORARY NEWSPAPERS 


Boston: 
The Columbian Centinel. 
The Independent Chronicle. 
New Yor: 
New York Daily Advertiser, 
Commercial Advertiser. 
New York Journal. 
American Minerva, 
The Argus. 
The Time Piece. 
Gazette of the United States. 
Louden’s Diary, or Register. 
PHILADELPHIA: 
National Gazette. 
Gazette of the United States. 
The General Advertiser. 
The Aurora. 


518 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Porcupine’s Gazette. 

Pennsylvania Daily Advertiser. 
BALrImMorE: 

Maryland Gazette. 

Maryland Journal. 
PortTsMOUTH: 

New Hampshire Gazette. 
CHARLESTON: 

City Gazette. 
Winpsor, VERMONT: 

Spooner’s Vermont Journal. 
HartrorpD: 

The Courant. 

The American Minerva. 
New Haven: 

Connecticut Gazette. 


MAGAZINES 


American Historical Review, October, 1899, January, 1900, ‘Contemporary Opin- 
ion of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions,’ by Frank M. Anderson. 

American Historical Association, Annual Reports, 1912, ‘The Enforcement of the 
Alien and Sedition Laws,’ by Frank M. Anderson; 1896-97, ‘Letters of. 
Phineas Bond.’ 

The Nation, July 18, 1912, ‘ Extracts from Diary of Moreau de St. Mery’; Septem- 
ber 5, 1895, ‘The Authorship of the Giles Resolutions,’ by Paul L. Ford. 


INDEX 


Adams, Abigail, New York house at Rich- 
mond Hill, 16; on removal of capital to 
Philadelphia, 116; on Philadelphia, 125; 
and Mrs. Bingham, 128, 129. 

Adams, Abijah, bookkeeper for editor of In- 
dependent Chronicle, imprisoned for libel, 
394, 395. 

Adams, John, begins ‘reign’ as Vice-Presi- 
dent, 3; troubled as to proper titles for the 
President and Vice-President, 3; on recep- 
tion of President in Senate, 3; what is the 
Vice-President when the Presidentis in Sen- 
ate? 3; writer of ‘Discourses of Davilla,’ 
published in Fenno’s Gazette, 17; on Hamil- 
ton, 37; Jeffersonians attempt to defeat 
for Vice-Presidency in 1792, 181; elected, 
but by small margin, 183; candidate for 
Presidency, in 1796, 310; suspects trickery, 
312; retains Washington’s Cabinet, 314; 
sketch of, at time of entering on Presi- 
dency, 316-26; Maclay on, 317; his vanity, 
318; jealousy of Washington, 319; difficult 
in conference, 320; not in sympathy with 
democracy, 322; his love of country, 323; 
moral courage, 325, 326; war with France 
threatened, 339; sends special mission to 
France, 345; reports failure of envoys to 
France, and recommends Congress to 
authorize warlike measures, 363; is ig- 
norant that Hamilton through McHenry 
is dictating policy, 363; action on publica- 
tion of X Y Z papers commended, 366; 
pulls down the pillars, 412; is troubled 
about French situation, 412; offers com- 
mand of army to Washington, 412, 413; 
conspiracy in Cabinet in favor of Hamil- 
ton, 412, 413; nominates Hamilton, Pinck- 
ney, and Knox as major-generals, 413; 
Federalist conspirators bombard him 
with suggestions that Hamilton should 
be second in command, 414; war plans 
all in Hamilton’s hands, 418-28; is ig- 
norant of much going on, 426; considers 
sending new mission to France, 428; sub- 
mits questions to Cabinet, for new nego- 


tions in 1800, 455, 456; suspects Hamilton) 
456; dismisses McHenry and Pickering 
from Cabinet, 456, 457; defeated for 
Presidency, 486; relations with Jefferson, 
on quitting office, 489, 490. 

Adams, John Quincy, on speculation by 
Congressmen, 47; on Madison, 57. 

Adams, Samuel, defeated for Representative 
to First Congress by Fisher Ames, 1; 
looked to by Jefferson for aid in forming 
opposition party in Massachusetts, 144; 
chosen by Jefferson as lieutenant, 144; 
presides at meeting in Boston on Jay 
Treaty, 278. 

Adams, Thomas, editor Boston Independent 
Chronicle, 152; prosecuted under Sedition 
Law, 393-94. 

Adet, , Minister to United States, from 
French Republic, credited with efforts to 
influence election in 1796, 311. 

Alien Bill, aimed at Irish immigrants, 374; 
French residents frightened and sail for 
France, 376; passed by close vote, 379. 

Allen, John, Representative from Connecti- 
cut, 379. 

American Minerva, on party feeling, 232. 

Ames, Fisher, Representative from Massa- 
chusetts, elected over Samuel Adams, 1; 
cynical over prospect of improvement in 
form of government over old Confedera- 
tion, 1; not impressed by his fellow Con- 
gressmen, 1; on cost of Federal Hall, 2; on 
titles, 6; Hamilton’s defender in House, 
47; on Madison, 51, 52; disgusted with 
contest for site of permanent capital, 65; 
on proposed amendment to Excise Bill, 
73; defends doctrine of ‘implied powers,’ 
76; elected director of Bank of United 
States, 90; on Giles’s resolutions attack- 
ing Treasury management, 201, 203; on 
yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, 
237; on Madison commerce resolutions, 
240, 241; sketch of, 302-04; makes strong 
plea in House for appropriations to carry 
out Jay Treaty, 305, 306. 





tiations with France or a declaration of | An Examination of the Late Proceedings of 


war, 429; Cabinet conspirators with 
Hamilton write war Message, 429; A. re- 


writes Message, 429, 430; is conscious of | 


Cabinet conspiracy, 430; appoints Minis- 
ter to France, 430; contest with Senate 
over confirmation, 430, 431; agrees to 
compromise, 432, 433; confounds his 
Cabinet conspirators, 436-38; depressed 
by Federalist defeat in New York elec- 


Congress Respecting the Official Conduct of 
the Secretary of the Treasury, pamphlet 
published in Philadelphia, 205; author- 
ship attributed to John Taylor of Caro- 
line, 206. 

Assumption, favored by North, where most 
of State indebtedness was unpaid, 59; 
opposed by Virginia, whose debt was 
largely paid, 59; defended by Madison, 


520 


61; lobbying for passage of bill, 61; un- 
easiness of friends of, 61, 62; Hamilton- 
ian press comments, 63; adopted after 
Hamilton’s bargain with Jefferson, 65, 68. 

Aurora, The, on the Jay Treaty, 273, 274, 
276, 277, 280, 286; on Hamilton’s Rey- 
nolds pamphlet, 355, 356. 

Austin, Ben, rope-maker, Jeffersonian 
organizer in Massachusetts, 144. 


Bache, Benjamin F., editor Pennsylvania 
Daily Advertiser, 152. 

Bank of the United States, Hamilton’s Re- 
port on, 74; bill for establishing, 75, 76; 
debate on bill in Congress, 75, 76; con- 
stitutionality questioned, 76; fears of 
veto, 77; much speculation in stock, 87, 
88; members of Congress involved, 89; 
charges of ‘corrupt squadron,’ 89; elec- 
tion of directors, 90; public indignation, 
90; bill introduced to reimburse for loan 
to Government, 190. 

Bard, Dr. John, fashionable physician, 15. 

Barnwell, Robert, Representative from 
South Carolina, on Giles’s resolutions 
attacking Treasury management, 203. 

Beckwith, , British Agent‘at Philadel- 
phia, cultivates Madison, 80; Jefferson on, 
80; protests Jefferson’s commendation of 
Paine’s Rights of Man, 83. 

Biddle, Charles, resolutions of welcome to 
Genét prepared at home of, 219; leads 
parade in honor of Genét, 220. 

Bingham, Marie, daughter of Mrs. William 
Bingham, 130. 

Bingham, William, elected director of Bank 
of United States, 90. 

Bingham, Mrs. William, social leader in 
Philadelphia, 127, 128; one of her fash- 
ionable gatherings described, 131-35. 

Bishop, Abraham, Jeffersonian organizer in 
Connecticut, 145. 

Black Friars, New York City club, 10. 

Bloodworth, Timothy, on Excise Bill, 72; 
lieutenant for Jefferson in North Carolina, 
150. 

Bond, Phineas, British Consul in Philadel- 
phia, 244. 

Boudinot, Elias, speculator in public se- 
curities, 62, 170; on Giles’s resolutions 
attacking Treasury management, 201. 

-Bowen’s Wax Works, Philadelphia, 138. 

Bradford, William, classmate of Madison at 
Princeton, 157. 

Breckel, Van, Dutch Minister to United 
States, entertains lavishly, 13. 

Breckenridge, John, of Kentucky, in con- 
ference with Jefferson on Alien and Sedi- 
tion Laws, 407; author of the Kentucky 
Resolutions, 408; sketch of, 408, 409. 

Brown, John, Jeffersonian leader in Ken- 
tucky, 180. 





INDEX 


Burk, John D., editor of New York Time 
Piece, arrested for sedition, 405. 

Burke, Audanus, Representative from South 
Carolina, makes vicious attack on Hamil- 
ton and his financial measures, 62. 

Burke, Edmund, and the French Revolu- 
tion, 82. 

Burr, Aaron, on wines in Philadelphia, 126, 
147; Jefferson moves to attach him to his 
party, 147; fellow student of Madison at 
Princeton, 157; possible candidacy of, for 
Vice-President in 1792, 181; leader of 
Jeffersonians in New York election of 
1800, 448; sketch of, contrasted with 
Hamilton, 449; combines forces with 
Society of Tammany, 451; his campaign 
methods, 452-54; urged for the Vice- 
Presidency in 1800, 455; secures copy of 
Hamilton’s pamphlet attacking Adams, 
publishes it in The Aurora, 478. 

Butler, Pierce, Senator from South Carolina, 
9; a ‘democrat’ whose associates were 
aristocrats, 1384; votes against ratification 
of Jay Treaty, 280. 


Cabot, George, sees irrevocable ruin of 
country, 63; pained at attitude of Madi- 
son, 63; candid friend and supporter of . 
Hamilton, 63; elected director of Bank of 
United States, 90; on meeting in Boston 
on Jay Treaty, 278; on Washington’s hesi- 
tation in signing Jay Treaty, 285. 

Callender, James Thomas, author of pam- 
phlet, The Prospect Before Us, indicted 
and convicted under Sedition Law, 400- 
02; defended by William Wirt, 401. 

Capital of the Nation, battle on permanent 
site for, 64, 65; bargaining to trade votes 
on Assumption, 65; bargain between » 
Hamilton and Jefferson on location of, 65, 
67; Hamilton indifferent as to location, 
65; Virginians and Marylanders want it 
at Georgetown, 65; Jefferson’s part in 
bargain, 66. 

Carrington, Edward, letter from Hamilton 
to, in 1792 campaign, 180. 

Carroll, Charles, of Carrollton, Senator from 
Maryland, on titles, 5; elected director of 
Bank of United States, 90; mentioned for 
Vice-President in 1792, 181. 

Certificates of indebtedness, issued to sol- 
diers of Revolution, in lieu of cash, bought 
up by speculators, 44, 45; Hamilton’s 
plans for redemption by funding scheme 
known in advance to members of Congress 
and friends, 46. 

Charleston City Gazette, on the Jay Treaty, 281. 

Chase, Samuel, Judge, and Mrs. William 
Bingham, 131; presiding justice in Alien 
and Sedition trials, 398, 400-02. 

Chateaubriand, Viscount de, on Philadelphia, 
123; 125. 


INDEX 


Chestnut Street Theater, Philadelphia, 137, 
185. 

Church, Mrs. Angelica, sister-in-law of 
Hamilton, 12; letters on Hamilton, 39. 

Cincinnati, Society of the, 48. 

City Tavern, Philadelphia, 119. 

Clinton, George, newspaper attack on 
Hamilton’s funding plans ascribed to, 50; 
Jeffersonian leader in New York, 147; 
in bitter fight with John Jay for gover- 
norship of New York in 1792, 178; urged to 
become candidate for Vice-President in 
1792, 181; receives votes of four States, 
though not an avowed candidate, 183; 
Jeffersonian candidate for Governor in 
New York election of 1800, 452. 

Clymer, George, Representative from Penn- 
sylvania, on Assumption, 58, 62; dinner 
party at house of, described, 126, 127. 

Cobbett, William, author of reply to Priest- 
ley’s addresses, 259; proprietor of Porcu- 
pine’s Gazette, q.v. 

Columbian Centinel, on Funding Bill, 57; 
letters to, on Madison and the Funding 
Bill, 57; ‘Publicola’ (John Quincy Adams) 
attacks Jefferson, Paine, and democracy, 
84; on Jeffersonians, 152; on Freneau’s 
attacks on Hamilton, 164; on speculative 
craze, 176, 178; on Indian expedition of 
St. Clair, 175; on Hamilton’s vindication 
of official conduct of Treasury, 199; on 
French Revolution, 207, 211; on relations 
with England, 220; on the Jay Treaty, 
278; on prospects of war with France, 366; 
war propaganda, 370, 371. 

Congress, meets in New York City, 1; Wash- 
ington and Adams declared elected, 2; 
ceremonial forms and titles excite much 
discussion, 3-6; first tariff measure in, 19; 
executive departments established, 19, 20; 
jealousy of executive, 20; Hamilton’s Re- 
port on Public Credit debated, 44 ff.; de- 
bate on Funding Bill, 48 ff.; scandal over 
speculation by members in certificates, 
Bank stock, and scrip, 89; ‘corrupt squad- 
ron,’ 89; bill to pay loan from Bank of 
United States hotly debated, 190-92; 
Giles’s resolutions condemning Hamilton, 
debates on, 199-203; resolutions defeated, 
203; Madison’s resolutions on Jefferson’s 
Report on Commerce, 240; Non-Inter- 
course Act, as reply to England’s high- 
handed seizure of American vessels, 244; 
debates in Senate on Jay Treaty, 272; de- 
bate in House over right to have papers 
as to treaty, 298; Alien Bill, debates on, 
374-79; Sedition Bill, debates on, 378, 
380. 

Connecticut Gazette, on French Revolution, 
211, 212; on Genét, 219. 

Cooper, Dr. Thomas, scientist and physi- 
cian, indicted under Sedition Act, 398; 


521 


convicted and imprisoned, 399; refuses to 
ask for pardon, 399. 

Coxe, Tench, Assistant Secretary of Treas- 
ury under Hamilton, and location of 
capital, 65. 

Croswell, Joseph, poem by, on French Re- 
volution, 208. 


Dallas, Alexander James, one of Jefferson’s 
leaders in Pennsylvania, 148; aids in pre- 
parations for reception of Genét, 219; 
efforts of, in case of brig Little Sarah, 227, 
228; defends Duane in prosecution under 
Alien Law, 396, 397. 

Davie, William R., on opposition to Jay 
Treaty, 281. 

Dayton, Jonathan, 148; scandal over reten- 
tion of public funds, 466. 

Democratic Party. See Jeffersonians. 

Democratic Clubs, organized, 222, 223; Fed- 
eralists insist they must be abolished, 260; 
condemned by Washington in Message, 
261. ; 

Democratic 
Clubs. 

De Moustier, French Minister to United 
States, Jefferson on, 108. 

Dodd, William E., quoted on Jefferson, 96. 

Duane, William, editor of The Aurora, 
arrested and prosecuted under the Alien 
Act, 396, 397; is acquitted, 397; indicted 
for sedition, 397; assaulted and beaten by 
soldiers, 420; prosecuted under Sedition 
Law, 442. 

Duer, William, financial failure of, in 1792 
starts panic, 176, 177; threatens damaging 
revelations from debtors’ prison, 187. 

Dunlap, William, historian of American 
theater, 10. 

Dwight, Timothy, on newspapers, 156. 


Societies. See Democratic 


Ellsworth, Oliver, Senator from Connecti- 
cut, on titles, 4; and the Assumption Bill, 
62; on French Revolution, 209; efforts of, 
to induce Washington to send Hamilton 
on special mission to England, 247; on 
Washington’s delay in signing Jay Treaty, 
285. 

Emmet, Thomas Addis, Irish refugee (bro- 
ther of Robert Emmet), of the New York 
Bar, 375. 

Everleigh, Nicholas, appointed Comptroller 
of the Treasury, 21. 

Excise Bill, warm debate on, in Congress, 71, 
73; amendment proposed to prohibit 
revenue Officers interfering in elections, 73; 
debate on duration of tax, 73. 


Fairfax estate, Virginia, litigation over, 281. 

Federal Gazette, Freneau in, opposes Bank 
Bill, 78. 

Federalists, policy to capitalize politically 


522 


popularity of Washington, 41; from be- 
ginning under domination of Hamilton, 
140; favored by commercial, intellectual, 
and professional classes, 140; leaders men 
of strength in most of the States, 140, 141; 
opposition to, inevitable, 144; denounce 
Democrats as conspirators, 151; attack 
Jeffersonian newspapers in Federalist 
organs, 203, 204; sympathies with royal- 
ists in French Revolution, 207, 208; en- 
force policy of neutrality in French 
Revolution wars, 216; force recall of 
Genét, 231; avert war with England and 
send Jay to negotiate treaty, 247; leaders 
induce attacks on ‘Democratic Societies,’ 
261; defend Jay Treaty, but with wry 
faces, 285-88; refuse to confirm nomina- 
tion of Rutledge as Chief Justice, 289; 
pass Alien and Sedition Acts, 375-80; 
efforts of leaders to force war with France, 
412-28: mean war to be a Federalist war, 
412; Hamilton is to conduct war with no 
interference from Adams, 412; secure ap- 
pointment of Hamilton as second in com- 
mand, 415; conspire to prevent Jeffer- 
sonians from securing commissions in 
army, 416; war not popular among the 
people at large, 418; raising funds for war 
purposes difficult, 418; taxes for war 
arouse resentment, 419; recruiting slow, 
421; public refuse to believe there is to be 
a war, 421, 422; Logan’s visit to France 
upsets Federalist war plans, 423, 424; the 
war hawks disappointed, 425, 426; Fed- 
eralists determined on war, 426, 427; Cab- 
inet conspirators write war Message for 
Adams, 429; scheme to override Adams, 
430; caucus, 430; friends of Adams’s 
policy in majority, 430; losing ground 
politically in 1799, 440; plan for changing 
method of counting electoral votes in 
Presidential election, 441, 442; bill passes 
Senate, but fails in the House, 442, 443; 
spring elections of 1800 show tide running 
against them, 448, 451-55; under Hamil- 
ton’s influence leaders plan to defeat 
Adams for Presidency, 455-58; hints at 
secession from Federalist leaders in case of 
Jefierson’s election, 468, 470; party split 
hopelessly on publication of Hamilton’s 
attack on Adams, 481, 482; defeated in 
election, leaders conspire to have electors 
vote for Burr, 491; Hamilton opposed to 
plan, 491-501; plan fails, after much bal- 
loting, 506. 

Fenno, John, protégé of Hamilton, estab- 
lishes Gazette of the United States, 4; his 
paper aspires to be the ‘court journal,’ 4; 
King and Hamilton interested in financing 
paper, 153, 154; patronage of government 
printing, 154; death of, from yellow fever, 
381. 


INDEX 


Fenno, John Ward, son of founder of Fenno’s 
Gazette, continues publication, 381. 

Fitzsimons, Thomas, Representative from 
Pennsylvania, speculator in certificates, 
47; Hamiltonians meet at lodgings of, 58; 
and the Assumption Bill, 62; Hamilton’s 
lieutenant in the House, 186; introduces 
resolution asking Hamilton to report plan 
for redemption of part of national debt, 
186; resolution precipitates sharp debate, 
186, 187; on Giles’s resolutions attacking 
Treasury management, 201. 

Florida Tea Garden, New York City, 10. 

Ford, Paul Leicester, quoted, on Jefferson, 
199. 

France, revolution in, effect of, in United 
States, 207; asked to recall Genét, 216; 
Adams sends mission to, 345; envoys un- 
successful, 363; publication of X YZ 
papers, 364, 365; Adams recommends 
preparations for war with, 365. 

Franchise, in 1789 limited in most of the 
States, 142; property qualifications, 142; 
Jefferson and, 142. 

French Revolution, the, its influence in the 
United States, 207, 208; Hamiltonians in- 
stinctively hostile to purposes of, 208; de- 
nounced by leading Federalist Senators, 
209; supported by Jefferson, 210; sym- 
pathy for, of the common people, 213; 
enthusiasm for the French, 213, 214; en- 
thusiasm for, heightened by arrival of 
Genét, 221, 222; liberty caps and liberty 
poles, 222; Democratic and Jacobin Clubs 
everywhere, 223; Federalists alarmed, 
223; clubs denounced as vicious ‘nurseries 
of sedition,’ 223. 

Freneau, Philip, ‘Poet of the Revolution,’ 
induced by Madison to establish news- - 
paper, 154; appointed to clerkship in De- 
partment of State, 155; establishes Na- 
tional Gazette, 155; Jeffersonians aided, 
155; at once assumes leadership, 155; 
paper recognized as Jefferson’s organ, 155; 
arouses Federalist rage, 156; influence of 
paper felt in back country, 156; classmate 
of Madison, Lee, Burr, and Brockholst 
Livingston at Princeton, 157; rebel by 
nature, 158; his career in the Revolu- 
tionary War, 158, 159; Gazette carefully 
watched by Hamilton, 163; attacks Ham- 
ilton’s policies, 164-68; attacked anony- 
mously in Fenno’s Gazette, 168; his digni- 
fied reply, 168; denies any connection of 
Jefferson with his paper, 169; renews 
crusade against Hamilton’s financial pol- 
icies, 195, 196; contrast of newspaper 
with Fenno’s, 163; criticisms of acts of 
Administration, 163; ‘Brutus’ article, 164; 
‘Sidney’ articles open attacks on Hamil- 
ton, 164, 165; controversy with Fenno, 
166, 167; charges Hamilton with author- 


INDEX 


ship of anonymous articles in Fenno’s 
Gazette, 169, 170; ‘Patriot’ articles in 
National Gazette, 195-97; analyzes votes in 
Congress vindicating Hamilton’s financial 
policies, 204; on Genét and French Re- 
volution, 218, 219; begins series of attacks 
on Washington, 221. 

Funding of debt, Hamilton’s scheme for, 
well received, 44; protests against, because 
of speculations in certificates, 45. 

Funding Bill, acrimonious debate on, in 
Congress, before passage, 48 ff. 


Gallatin, Albert, Representative in Penn- 
sylvania Legislature, denounces Hamil- 
ton’s Excise Bill, 70; leading Jeffersonian 
in Pennsylvania, 149; elected to Senate 
from Pennsylvania, but not allowed to 
take seat, on technicality, 289; elected as 
Representative, 289; sketch of, 292-94, 

Gates, Horatio, Jeffersonian candidate in 
New York elections of 1800, 452. 

Gazette of the United States, ‘court journal,’ 
4, 10; Adams’s ‘Discourses of Davilla’ 
published in, 17; Fenno defends specula- 
tion in public securities, 48; Fenno in, on 
criticisms of proceedings of Congress, 57; 
on Funding Bill, 57; attacks in, on ‘dema- 
gogues,’ 63; on Bank, 79; Fenno’s verses 
on passage of Bank Bill, 79; probably es- 
tablished with aid of Rufus King, 153; 
Hamilton interested in raising money for, 
154; tone pro-English, 154; received gov- 
ernment patronage, 154; controversy with 
National Gazette, 166-70; Fenno engages 
in controversy with Freneau, 166, 167, 
169; on Hamilton’s defense of official con- 
duct of Treasury, 199; on Boston Argus, 
203; on French Revolution, 211; on at- 
tacks on Washington, 221: ‘Pacificus’ 
letters in, by Hamilton, 225, 226; attacks 
on Jefferson, 233; on the Jay Treaty, 282. 

Geisse’s Tavern, Philadelphia, 121. 

General Advertiser, on defeat of Jay by 
Clinton in New York election, 178. 

Genét, Edmond Charles, Minister from the 
French Republic, arrives in Charleston, 
124; enthusiastically received everywhere, 
218; his progress to Philadelphia con- 
tinuous ovation, 218; formally welcomed 
at Philadelphia by people, 219, 220; 
cordially received by Jefferson, 220; 
cold reception of, by Washington, 220; 
impudent conduct of, 224. 

Giles, William Branch, Representative from 
Virginia, in favor of Excise Bill, fe ves 
opposes Bank Bill, 76; organizer for Jef- 
ferson in Virginia, 149; opposes bill to re- 
pay loan from Bank of United States, 
190, 191; his personal characteristics, 192; 
a giant in debate, 194; selected by Jeffer- 
son to lead in attacks on Hamilton’s finan- 






















523 


cial policies, 195, 197; presents resolutions 
demanding information from Secretary of 
the Treasury, 197; presents resolutions. 
condemning Hamilton’s conduct in man- 
agement of Treasury, 199-203; in confer- 
ence of Jeffersonian leaders, 205; on Mad- 
ison commerce resolutions, 241. 

Golden Lion, the, Philadelphia tavern, 120. 

Goodrich, Chauncey, on adoption of French 
Revolution titles, 222. 

Gove, Christopher, prominent Massachu- 
setts Federalist, 47; speculates largely in 
certificates, 47. 

Granger, Gideon, 
Connecticut, 145. 

Gray’s Gardens, on the Schuylkill, 121, 122. 

Graydon, Rev. Alexander, on yellow fever 
epidemic in Philadelphia, 237. 

Greenleaf, Thomas, editor NewYork J ournal, 
152. 

Grenville, Lord William Wyndham, negoti- 
ates treaty with John Jay, 269-71. 

Grout, Jonathan, opposes Bank Bill, 76. 

Gunn, Georgia Senator, votes for ratification 
with Jay, 283; burned in effigy along with 
Jay, 283. 


Democratic leader in 


Hamilton, Alexander, an interested spectator 
at Washington’s inaugural, 7; appointed 
Secretary of the Treasury, 21; a portrait, 
22-42; his personal appearance, 22; his 
birth, illegitimate,-23; his mother brilliant 
and high-strung, ‘23; his ambition always 
military, 24; comes from the West Indies 
to America, 25; his genius that of writer 
and thinker on governmental affairs, 
rather than as soldier, 25; his Federalist 
writings, 26; master of invective, 26; a 
persuasive orator, 26, 27; refused per- 
mission by Congress to present his reports 
personally, 27; essentially an aristocrat, 
28; ideal of government ‘the rule of 
gentlemen,’ supported by a strong mili- 
tary force, 29; distrusted always a de- 
mocracyy 29; held public opinion of no 
value, 29; disapproved of the Constitution 
as adopted, but urged its ratification as 
better than nothing, 30; his own plan pre- 
sented to the Constitutional Convention 
radically different from that adopted, 30, 
31; his} republic to be an aristocratic re- 
public, with the States as States abol- 
ished, 31; took little part in Constitutional 
Convention, 32; large factor in making 
the Convention possible, and in securing 
ratification of Constitution, 32, 33; his 
sense of system, 33; capable of long- 
sustained exertion, 33, 34; a hard fighter, 
34; honesty, 34; as a party leader, lacking 
in tact, 35; never consulted, but directed, 
35; egotistical and vain, 36; lacking in 
judgment in handling of men, 36; un- 


524 


necessarily offended sensibilities, 36, 37; 
lacked sympathy always with the ‘com- 
mon man,’ 37; affectionate in his family 
relations, 38; with his equals socially de- 
lightful companion, 38; inordinately fond 
of women and their society, 38, 39; always 
of delicate rather than robust health, 39, 
40; not a church member, but a believer in 
religion, 40; attitude toward his chief, 41; 
obsessed by idea of a strong government, 
45; believed necessary to enlist propertied 
interest, 45; indifferent to unpropertied 
classes, 45; active in interest of Fund- 
ing Bill, 49; bargains with Jefferson on 


location of new national capital, 66-68; | 


at high tide of popularity, 69; considers 
himself Prime Minister, 69; offends other 
Cabinet members, by dictatorial manner, 
69; indifferent to public opinion, 70; pre- 
pares Excise Bill, 70, 71; takes personal 
{| charge of Excise Bill in Senate, 73; Na- 
\. tional Bank Bill, 74; enunciates doctrine of 
implied powers, 75; breaks with Jefferson 
when J. advises Washington Bank Bill 
is unconstitutional, 78; Fenno’s Gazette 
his organ, 154; Report on Manufactures 
filed with Congress, 161; interests capi- 
-tal in developing Passaic Falls, 162; por- 
trait by Trumbull subscribed for, 162; 
attention attracted by Freneau’s Gazette, 
163; believes Jefferson responsible for 
attacks in paper, 166; attacks Freneau 
anonymously, 168; tries to drive Jeffer- 
son from the Cabinet, 169; in Fenno’s 
Gazette attacks Jefferson, 172; denies his 
own unfriendliness to Constitution, 173; 
complains of Jefferson’s interference with 
Treasury Department, 173; warns Adams 
of effort to defeat him in 1792 cam- 
paign, 181; possible candidacy of Aaron 
Burr for Vice-President maddening, 181; 
makes strenuous efforts in Adams’s 
behalf, 181; urges Adams in dictatorial 
terms to his duty, 182; blackmailing of, by 
Reynolds, 187; tells complete story of 
relations with Reynolds’s wife to deputa- 
_ tion from Congress, 188-90; amazes House 
‘by reports, 198; his official conduct of 
the Treasury vindicated by Congress, 
203; alarmed at enthusiasm for French 
Revolution, 214; urges Washington to re- 
turn to Philadelphia, 214; takes matters 
into his own hands and decides on pro- 
per policy of Jefferson’s Department of 
State, 215; prepares list of questions for 
Washington to submit to Cabinet, 215; 
his position on the reception to be 
given Genét, 215; writes series of papers 
for Fenno’s Gazette justifying policy of 
Neutrality in French Revolution struggle, 
225, 226; is answered by Madison, 226; 
aided by Genét’s conduct, 227; is stricken 


INDEX 


with yellow fever, 237, 238; sees risk of war 
with England, 245; is mentioned as special 
envoy to England, 246; declines to have , 
his name considered, 247; goes in person to 
put down Whiskey Insurrection, 254-56; 
}-plans to crush the Democratic Societies, 
256; is aided by Washington’s attack on 
Societies, in Annual Message, 262, 264; 
prepares to leave Cabinet, 266; considers 
his work finished, 266; opens law office in 
New York, 268; plans to direct Federalist 
Party in Congress by correspondence, 268; 
dubs Jay Treaty an ‘execrable thing,’ 271; 
is injured in rioting in New York, 276, 
277; consults with leading Federalists on 
/ campaign of 1796, 308; distrusts Adams, 
308; H. and King decide to offer support 
to Patrick Henry, 308, 309; H. turns to 
Thomas Pinckney, 310; plans to bring in 
Adams second, 311; publishes pamphlet 
on relations with Mrs. Reynolds, 355; 
advises Adams through McHenry on 
French situation, 362; prepares to play 
trump card — xX Y Z papers — to force 
war with France, 364; advises moderation 
in framing Alien and Sedition Bills, 376, 
377; is nominated Major-General in pro- 
spective war with France, 413; schemes 
to be made second in command, 414; 
directs fight against Adams through his 
tools in Cabinet, 414; in correspondence 
with Miranda, South American adventurer, 
427, 428; opposed by Burr in 1800 New 
York elections, 448-55; contrast between 
H. and Burr, 449; plans election of Presi- 
dential electors he can control, with view 
of defeating Adams, 451; power broken 
with defeat of Federalists in New York 
in 1800, 454; tour of New England in 1800, 
459; schemes against Adams in contest 
for Presidency, 459-65; writes pamphlet 
attacking Adams, not intended for general 
publication, 477, 478; effect of pamphlet 
when published, 479, 480. 

Hamilton, Mrs. Alexander, 
General Schuyler, 134. 

Hamilton, William, and trees in Philadelphia, 
TT?. 

Hammond, George, British Minister to 
United States, 246; more friendly to Hamil- 
ton than to Jefferson, 246. 

Hancock, John, Jefferson’s aide in forming 
new party, 144. 

Harper, Robert Goodloe, president of 
Jacobin Club of Charleston, 223; Repre- 
sentative from South Carolina, 346; sketch 
of, 347; on the Sedition Bill, 379, 380. 

Harrowgate Gardens, Philadelphia, 121. 

Hawkins, Benjamin, Senator from North 
Carolina, in conference with Jeffersonian 
leaders, 205. 

Henry, Patrick, on Assumption, 60; Hamil- 


daughter of 


INDEX 


tonians offer him support for Presidency, 
309; declines overtures made through John 
Marshall, 309. 

Higginson, Stephen, on Jay Treaty meetings 
in Boston, 278. 

Holt, Charles, editor of New London Bee, 
convicted of sedition, 403, 404. 

Humphreys, William, secretary to Washing- 
ton, 119. 

Hutchinson, Dr. , in yellow fever 
epidemic in Philadelphia, 237. 





Independent Chronicle, letters to, on Fund- 
ing Bill, 57, 58; on Funding Bill, 58; on 
First Congress, 79; correspondents to, 
reply to letters of ‘Publicola,’ 85; other 
letters in, defend ‘Publicola’ letters, 85; 
on Freneau’s paper the Federal Gazette 
(National Gazette), 155; on Indian expedi- 
tion of St. Clair, 175; on speculative 
craze, 176, 177; on Jay Treaty, 281, 283, 
284; on X Y Z papers, 364. 

Indian Queen, Philadelphia tavern, 120. 

Iredell, James, Senator from South Caro- 
lina, on Genét, 218. 

Izard, Ralph, Senator from South Carolina, 
on titles, 5; and the Assumption Bill, 62; 
on John Adams, 316. 


Jackson, James, Representative from Geor- 
gia, later Senator, opposes Hamilton’s 
financial measures, 45, 49; on funding of 
debt, 49, 50; on Assumption, 60, 61; on 
Excise Bill, 71, 72; opposes Bank Bill, 76; 
aids Jefferson in organizing party, 150. 

Jackson, William, secretary to Washington, 
119. 

Jackson, Mrs. William, sister of Mrs, William 
Bingham, 135. 

Jacobin Club, Democratic Club of Charles- 
ton, 223. 

Jarvis, Dr. Charles, of Massachusetts, 
Jeffersonian leader, 144; on French Revo- 
lution, 208; unsuccessful candidate for 
Congress against Fisher Ames, 257. 

Jay, John, considered by Washington for 
post of Secretary of the Treasury, 21; de- 
feated for governorship of New York, in 
1792, 178; appointed special Minister to 
Great Britain, 247, 248; obnoxious to 
Jeffersonians, 248; his experience in 
diplomacy, 248; bitter fight in Senate over 
confirmation, 249; concludes treaty with 
Great Britain, 269-71; is denounced when 
provisions of treaty are published, 274; 
burned in effigy, 274. 

Jay Treaty, the, called ‘Grenville Treaty’ by 
Jeffersonians, 269; negotiated by John Jay 
and Lord Grenville, 269-71; provisions of, 
271; dubbed by Hamilton an ‘execrable 
thing,’ 271; debated at length in Senate, 
272; efforts of Senators to prevent publica- 


525 


tion, 272; storm of denunciation over its 
provisions, 273; rioting in many places, 
274-76: endorsed at instance of Federalists 
by chambers of commerce, 279; mob spirit 
on account of, in Boston, 279; protests 
against, from Charleston, 280, 281; meet- 
ings in opposition to, throughout the 
country, 281-85; demands for papers and 
instructions as to, made by House before 
making appropriations required to carry 
it out, 298; papers refused by President, 
298. 

Jefferson, Thomas, shocked at unrepublican 
tone of New York society, 12; bargains 
with Hamilton to aid in passage of 
Assumption Bill, 66; afterward claimed 
Hamilton had deceived him, 67; letters of, 
on Assumption, 67; letters on Treasury 
policies, 74; gives Washington re 

opinion on constitutionality of Bank Bill,+ 
77; relations with Hamilton strained, 78; 
tour through New England, 79, 81; eatioa 
letter commending Paine’s Rights of Man, 
which printer uses as preface to pamphlet, 
with J.’s name and official title, 83; J. 
embarrassed, 83; Adams angry at J.’s 
supposed reference to him, 84; J. explains 
and Adams satisfied, 85; J. pleased 
with effect of newspaper turmoil, 85, 86; 
position as friend of the ‘man of no 
importance’ established, 86; comment on 
speculative craze, 87; makes political 
issue of speculation by Federalist Congress- 
men, 90; begins work of organizing an 
opposition party, 90; a portrait of the man, 
92-113; personal appearance, 92; careless 
in dress, 92; dignified, but shy, 93; thought 
lacking in frankness, 93; glance shifty, 93; 
entertaining talker, 94; maternal ancestry 
aristocratic, 94; father a Western pioneer, 
95; J. a Westerner with Eastern polish, 95; 
educated at William and Mary College, 
95; well trained in the law, 96; influenced 
by Locke’s writings, 96; J.’s democracy 
inherent, 96; as member af Virginia House 
of Burgesses, attacks system of land entail 
and law of primogeniture, 97; never for- 
given by Virginia landed aristocracy, 98; 
as U.S. Minister to France, intimate of 
Lafayette, 98; popular with all classes, 98; 
familiarizes himself with French life in the 
country, 99; diplomatic reports illuminat- 
ing, 99; comments on French system of 
government, 99; not hostile to monarchy, 
100; reports to Jay on rioting in Paris, 100; 
intimate of the Girondists, 100; returns to 
America before the Terror, 101; a human- 
itarian, 101; opposed to capital punish- 
ment save for treason, 101; a humane 
master, 102; hostile to slavery, 102; wrote 
the Ordinance of the N.W. Territory, 102; 
not an atheist nor hostile to Christian 


526 


4 


‘ satisfied with policies of Government 


religion, 103; contributed regularly to 
support of clergy, 103; hated by the clergy 
for forcing separation in Virginia of Church 
and State, 104; so-called atheist law, 104; 
his view of creation, 104, 105; not hostile to 
the Constitution and favored its ratifica- 
tion, 105; called Convention ‘an assembly. 
of demigods,’ 105; first impressions of 
Constitution unfavorable, 105; an ardent 
friend later, 106; writes Madison praising 
The Federalist papers, 106; writes Wash- 
ington, hoping a Bill of Rights will be 
added, 106; his views on, quoted from his 
Autobiography, 107; without a peer in the 
mastery of men, 107; his understanding of 
mass psychology, 107; a voluminous letter 
writer, 107; valued the press as engine of 
democracy, 108; captivating in personal 
contacts, 108; led rather than drove, 108; 
original ‘Easy Boss,’ 108; not an orator, 
109; disliked contentious debates, 109; 
had great self-control, 109; never belittled 
his enemies, 110; admired Hamilton’s 
ability, 110; estranged from John Adams 
for years, revived in last years the old 
riendship, 110; not an idealist, but an 
opportunist, 110; a resourceful politician, 
111; his diversified interests, 112; loved 
art in all its forms, 112; arranged in Paris 
for statue of Washington by Houdon, 0th 
visited by Humboldt, 113; interested in 
mechanical and scientific inventions, 113, 
114; the life of the farmer his chief interest, 
113; democratic in sympathies, but lived 
as an aristocrat, 138; finds commercial 
interests, professions, and major portion 
of press Federalist, 140; notes resentment 
of farmers and old Revolutionary soldiers, 
141; notes dissatisfaction with Excise Law, 
141; fears doctrine of implied sovereignty, 
as undermining sovereignty of States, 
141; problem to reach and arouse masses, 
142; material for opposition party abun- 
dant, 142; J. notes local parties in 
opposition in every State, 143; pro- 
blem to consolidate and broaden local 
into national issues, 143; chooses leaders 
in various States with keen judgment, 
143-50; efforts directed to broaden fran- 
chise, 151; importance of a national 
newspaper, 152; sends letter of resignation 
to Washington, 166; grows more dis- 






































under Hamilton’s leadership, 168; is 
attacked by Hamilton in newspapers, 169; 
refuses to be drawn into newspaper con- 
troversy with Hamilton, 173; official 
associations and social relations, un- 
pleasant, 173; writes to personal friends 
with much bitterness of Hamilton’s at- 
tacks, 173, 174; tries to drive Hamilton 
from Cabinet, and fails, 203; no match for 


INDEX 


Hamilton in field of finance, 206; sees new 
issue in position of Federalists on French 
Revolution, 210; ardent in support of 
French, 210; believes American Republic 
bound up with success of French Revo- 
lution, 210; senses the sympathies of 
the ‘people of no importance,’ 213; his 
position on question of receiving Genét, 
216; agrees to Proclamation of Neutrality, 
216; urges Madison to reply to Hamilton’s 
articles on Neutrality, 226; and the brig 
Iittle Sarah, 228; Genét’s conduct ob- 
noxious to J., 228; plans to divorce 
Jeffersonians from Genét, 229; discusses 
with the President as to Genét, 230; 
prepares letter to American Minister at 
Paris asking Genét’s recall, 230; socially 
ostracized in Philadelphia, 232-33; resigns 
his portfolio as Secretary of State, 233; 
his correspondence with both British and 
French Ministers, impartial, 238; Report 
on Commerce, and Algerine piracy, 238, 
239; returns to private life, 239; plans to 
force fighting in congressional elections 
of 1794, 256-58; lives in retirement at 
Monticello, but active in political plans, 
259; indifferent as to Presidency contest 
in 1796, 307; concerned as to health, 307; 
his letter to Philip Mazzei on American 
politics, 308; Democrats decide in 1796 on 
J. as their candidate for President, 308; J. 
receives only three votes less than Adams, 
and hence is chosen Vice-President, 312; 
J.’s letter to Mazzei again brought up, 
351; bitterly attacked in Fenno’s Gazette, 
352; toasted on Washington’s Birthday at 
Harvard College, in satirical vein, 353; 
J. silent under slanderous attacks in 
newspapers, 353; his social ostracism 
in Philadelphia continues, 354; Jefferson 
plans opposition to Administration policy 
toward France, 363, 364; the Sprigg 
Resolutions, 363, 364; publication of X Y Z 
papers, 365, 366; his party seeks, on his 
advice, to moderate war feeling, 374; out- 
raged by passage of Alien and Sedition 
Laws, 407; moves for their repeal, 407; 
conference at Monticello, 407; inspires 
Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, 407, 
408; fears insurrection, 418; election of, 
as President in 1800, inevitable, 441; no 
rival in his party, 444; his political genius, 
444-48; elected President, 486; his meeting 
with Adams in Washington, 489, 490; fare- 
well to Senate, 507; inauguration, 509, 510. 
Jeffersonians, party of opposition organized 
by Jefferson (called ‘Jeffersonians,’ ‘Jaco- 
bins,’ *Democrats,’ and other names, offi- 
cially ‘Republicans’), 144-50; take ad- 
vantage of divisions among Federalists, 
151; ‘Jeffersonian insolence,’ 151; make 
gains in the congressional elections, 1792, 


INDEX 


180; strong in Virginia, 180; five States 
carried by, in 1792, 183; gains by, in elec- 
tion of 1794, 312;sweep West and South in 
1796, 312; embarrassed by publication of 
X Y Z papers, 364, 365; aided by excesses 
of Federalists in pushing prosecutions 
under Sedition Act, 365-411; win in New 
York elections of 1800, 455; confident in 
Presidential campaign of 1800, 465-85; 
elect Jefferson President, 506. 

Johnson, Samuel, of North Carolina, on 
Assumption Bill, 63; chosen director of 
Bank of United States, 90; on Jay Treaty, 
281. 

Jones, Willie, North Carolina leader of Jef- 
fersonians, 149. 

Jumel, Madame, 39. | 


Kentucky Resolutions, written and intro- 
duced in Legislature by Breckenridge, at 
suggestion of Jefferson, 408. 

King, Rufus, Senator from New York, on 
Assumption, 60; Federalist leader in 
Senate, 60; and the Assumption Bill, 62; 
discouraged at apparent failure of As- 

. sumption Bill, 63; chosen director of 
Bank of United States, 90; on French 
Revolution, 209; conference of Federalist 
leaders in Philadelphia lodgings of, 247; on 
business in Senate, 298, 299; on suppres- 
sion of Irish rebellion, 375; protests re- 
lease by British of Irish prisoners, 375. 

Kirby, Ephraim, Democratic organizer in 
Connecticut, 145. 

Knox, Henry, Secretary of War, 13; resents 
Hamilton’s interference with War Depart- 
ment purchases, 69; attacked by Jeffer- 
sonians for mismanagement of St. Clair 
expedition against the Indians, 175; on 
reception of Genét, 215. 

Knox, Mrs. Henry, a Mrs. Malaprop, 15. 


Langdon, John, Senator from New Hamp- 
shire, Democratic leader in New Hamp- 
shire, 146; votes against Jay Treaty, 282. 

Laurance, John, Representative from New 
York, on Madison’s amendment to Fund- 
ing Bill, 55; and Assumption Bill, 62; on 
Excise Bill, 72; elected director of Bank of 

[ United States, 90; on Giles’s resolutions 
attacking Treasury management, 201. 

Lear, Tobias, secretary to Washington, 119. 

Lee, Richard Henry, Senator from Virginia, 
on question of titles, 5; fellow student of 
Madison at Princeton, 157. 

L’Enfant, Pierre Charles, designs Federal 
Hall, New York City, 2; employed by 
Hamilton in planning city of Paterson, 
162. 

Little Sarah, brig, 227. 

Livermore, Samuel, on effect of amendment to 
Excise Bill, 73. 


527 


Livingston, Brockholst, classmate of Mad- 
ison at Princeton, 157; in New York elec- 
tions of 1800, 452. 

Livingston, Edward, Representative from 
New York, sketch of, 290, 291; asks that 
the papers and instructions pertaining to 
Jay Treaty be laid before the House, 294; 
debate on resolutions of, on Jay Treaty, 
294-97; resolutions of, on Jay Treaty, 
adopted, 297; on the Alien Bill, 378; on the 
Sedition Bill, 379. 

Livingston, Robert R., Chancellor of New 
York State, defeated for Senate through 
influence of Hamilton, 36; leading Jeffer- 
sonian, 147. 

Logan, Dr. James, Philadelphia, friend of 
Jefferson, 138; his visit to France, 423-26. 

London Tavern, Philadelphia, 120. 

Lyon, Matthew, Democratic leader in Ver- 
mont, 146; ridicules Federalist practice of 
framing Reply to the President’s Message, 
350; attacked in newspapers, 350, 351; in 
disgraceful wrangle with Griswold, 360; 
attacked by Griswold, and rough-and- 
tumble fight ensues, 361; victim of Reign 
of Terror, under Sedition Act, 386-88. 


McClenachan, Blair, and Jay Treaty, 276. 

McCormick, Dan, his House of Gossip, 15. 

McHenry, James, on Hamilton, 38; member 
of Washington’s military family, 39; in 
1792 campaign, 181, 182; on John Adams, 
324; Adams’s Secretary of War, sketch of, 
334-38; dismissed by Adams, 456. 

Maclay, William, Senator from Pennsyl- 
vania, moved to laughter over matter of 
titles, 4; on Hamilton’s funding scheme, 
44, 45; on speculations of Congressmen, 
47, 48; has plan, substitute for Funding 
Bill, 56; on his colleague, Scott, 56, 61; on 
Assumption, 61; on Vining, of Delaware, 
61; letters to, from Rush and Logan op- 
posing Assumption, 61; approached by 
Morris to join in land speculations, 61, 62; 
on attitude of Congressmen and specula- 
tors and Assumption, 62; on Hamilton and 
Congress, 68; on Excise Bill, 73, 74; on 
Bank Bill, 75; Jefferson’s aide in Pennsyl- 
vania, 148; on French Revolution, 209; on 
John Adams, 317. 

Macon, Nathaniel, North Carolina, or- 
ganizer for Jefferson, 150; in conference of 
Jeffersonian leaders, 205. 

Madison, James, Representative from Vir- 
ginia, on Congress, 3; on titles, 6; seeks 
postponement of first tariff measure, 19; 
on Hamilton’s Report on Public Credit, 46; 
on Funding Bill, 51; part in framing Con- 
stitution, 51; contributions to The Fed- 
eralist, 51; not an orator, 52; consulted 
often by Washington, 53; cultivated by 
Hamilton, 53; loved as a son by Jefferson, 


028 


53; proposes an amendment to discrimi- 
nate between original owners and pur- 
chasers of public securities, 53, 54; Fed- 
eralists and speculators much disturbed, 
55, 56; on resolutions of commercial organ- 
izations, 55; amendment to Funding Bill, 
voted down, 56; votes for Assumption 
Bill, 61; letter to Monroe, 63; and bargain 
on Assumption Bill, 66, 67; opposes prin- 
ciple of Excise Bill, but votes in favor, 
72; on Hamilton’s doctrine of implied 
powers, 76; advises Washington Bank Bill 
is unconstitutional, 77; tours New Eng- 
land with Jefferson, 79, 81; writes articles, 
attacking Hamilton’s policies, for Na- 
tional Gazette, 169; defends Jefferson’s posi- 
tion on Constitution, 172; attacks Fenno’s 
‘unmanly attack’ on Jefferson, 172; on 
Giles’s resolutions attacking Treasury 
management, 201; replies to Hamilton’s 
Neutrality articles, 226; prepares resolu- 
tions based on Jefferson’s Report on Com- 
merce, 240; attacked by Federalists, 240, 
241; excitement in the country, merchants 
denouncing and populace favoring M.’s 
Resolutions, 242-44; marriage to Dolly 
Todd, 259; author of Virginia Resolutions, 
409. 

Marshall, John, Representative from Vir- 
ginia (afterward Chief Justice of the 
United States), appointed special envoy 
to France, 345; his return made an occa- 
sion for riotous celebration, 368, 369; op- 
poses the Alien and Sedition Laws, in 
letter to Porcupine’s Gazette, 382: opposes 
plans of his party (Federalist) for change 
in electoral count, 442; appointed Secre- 
tary of State by Adams, 457. 

Martin, Luther, the ‘Federalist bull-dog,’ 
attacks Jefferson, 352, 353. 

Maryland Journal, on Hamilton, 69; on 
Assumption, 71; on speculation, 88; on 
speculative craze, 177. 

Mason, Stevens Thomson, Senator from 
Virginia, publishes Jay Treaty, 273. 

‘Men of no importance,’ feeling among, 
against Funding and Assumption Bills, 
70; and Excise Bill, 70, 71. 

Mercer, John Francis, Representative from 
Maryland, organizer for Jefferson in Mary- 
land, 149; on Giles’s resolutions attacking 
Treasury management, 201, 203. 

Mifflin, Thomas, Governor of Pennsylvania, 
148; orders militia to parade in honor of 
President, 359. 

Mingo-Creek Society, Democratic Club, 262. 

Miranda, Francesco de, soldier of fortune 
and adventurer, proposes revolutionary 
scheme in South America, 427; in corre- 
spondence with Hamilton, 427; holds out 
lure of Florida and Cuba to United States, 
427. 


INDEX 


Monroe, James, Senator from Virginia, of 
deputation from Congress to Hamilton on 
the Reynolds charges, 187; Minister to 
France, 341, 342; banquet in honor of, in 
Philadelphia, on return from France, 358; 
confers with Jefferson and Democratic 
leaders, 358. 

Moore, Thomas, poet, on Jefferson, 90. 
Moreau de Saint-Merys, threatened with 
prosecution under Alien Law, 405, 406. 
Morris, Gouverneur, on Hamilton’s speech 
in Constitutional Convention, presenting 
plan for Constitution, 32; Minister to 

France, 339-41. 

Morris, Robert, Senator from Pennsylvania, 
on titles, 6; through business partner, spec- 
ulated in certificates, 46; legislative agent 
of Hamilton, 47; discusses with Hamilton 
on location of capital, 65, 66; rents his resi- 
dence in Philadelphia as Presidential resi- 
dence, 119; Hamilton outlines his Bank 
policy to, 74; on Genét, 217. 


Morris, Mrs. Robert, intimate of Mrs. 
Washington, ‘second lady in the land,’ 
Tale : 


Morse, Anson, D., quoted, 142. - 

Muhlenberg, Frederick A. C., Speaker of 
the House, pokes fun at Senators on titles, 
5; favors Assumption Bill, 58; one of de- 
putation from Congress to Hamilton on 
the Reynolds charges, 187. 


National Gazette, on Hamilton’s Report on 
Manufactures, 161, 163; attacksin, on Ham- 
ilton, 166-70; attacks in, on Washington, 
221; attacks Hamilton’s conduct of the 
Treasury, 196, 197; presents analysis of 
vote vindicating Hamilton’s manage- 
ment of Treasury, 204; on French Revo- 
lution, 207, 211, 212; on Genét, 218, 219, 
220; prints Madison’s reply to ‘ Pacificus’ 
letters in Gazette of United States, 226. 

Naturalization Act, 264. 

Neutrality, Proclamation of, in war between 
French Republic and England, 216; dis- 
satisfaction of people, 217, 220; flouted 
by both French and British, 224; justified 
by Hamilton in brilliant series of articles 
in Fenno’s Gazette, 225, 226; the case of 
the Little Sarah, 227, 228. 

New Hampshire Gazette, on the Jay Treaty, 
282. 

New York, Argus, on the Jay Treaty, 275, 
Zid, 219, 25a, 28s. 

New York City, capital of the Nation in 
1789, 1; First Congress meets in, 1; prepa- 
rations for Washington’s Inaugural, 2, 3,7; 
inaugural ball, 7, 8; life in, 8, 10; narrow 
streets, and muddy, 10; theatrical pro- 
ductions, 10,11; cost of living, 12; tone of 
society not republican, 12; republican 
‘court,’ 13, 15; Wall Street fashionable 

ki ope 


INDEX 


residence street, 15; slave market and 
whipping-post prominent in 1789, 9, 10; 
taverns, theaters, 11; yellow fever epi- 
demic, 380. 

New York Daily Advertiser, on First Con- 
gress, 79; ‘Publicola’ letters in Columbian 
Centinel answered, 84, 85. 

New York Journal, on Assumption, 63, 
64. 

New York Register, on Madison’s amend- 
ment to Funding Bill, 177. 

New York Time Piece, on X Y Z papers, 
365. 

Newspapers, stories in, as to speculations in 
public securities, 50; on the Funding Bill, 
57, 58; on Assumption, 71; on Bank, 78, 
79; on Jefferson and Paine’s Rights of Man, 
84, 85; on speculative craze, 88, 89, 176, 
177; on Hamilton’s Report on Manufac- 
tures, 161; on attacks on Hamilton’s 
financial measures, 163, 165; Federalist 
and Jeffersonian organs, 166-70; Hamil- 
ton’s attacks in, on Jefferson, 172; on 
Indian expedition of St. Clair, 175; on 
election of Clinton Governor of New York, 
178; in campaign of 1792, 181-83; crusade 
against Hamilton, 196; on Hamilton’s de- 
fense of his financial policy, 198, 199, 203, 
204; on French Revolution, 207, 211, 212; 
on Genét, 218-20; attacks on and defense 
of Washington, 221; onthe Democratic So- 
cieties, 253; on the Whiskey Insurrection, 
254, 255; on the Jay Treaty, 273-83; in 
campaign of 1796, 310, 311; on the debates 
in Congress on trouble with France, 350- 
61; on the X Y Z papers, 364, 365; on 
supposed French outrages, 366-71; on 
Alien and Sedition Bills, 374-81; in Presi- 
dential campaign of 1800, 444-85. 

Nicholas, George, Kentucky Jeffersonian, 
challenges Harper to debate on Sedition 
Law, 406. 

Nicholas, Wilson Carey, of Virginia, in 
conference with Jefferson at Monticello on 
plans to repeal the Alien and Sedition 
Laws, 407. 

Noailles, Viscount de, visitor to Phila- 
delphia, 135;-appointed Minister by Royal 
Princes at Coblentz, received by Wash- 
ington, 219; Bache’s Daily Advertiser on, 
234. 


O’Eller’s tavern, Philadelphia, 119, 121, 136; 
dinner at, to Genét, 220. 

Order of the Cincinnati, Jefferson on, 262. 

Otis, Harrison Gray, on Hamilton, 38; on 
Philadelphia, 123, 124; Representative 
from Massachusetts, 346; sketch of, 346. 


Paine, Thomas, Rights of Man reply to 
Burke’s Reflections upon the French Revolu- 
tion, 82; puplication of pamphlet in Phila- 


529 


delphia creates sensation, 82, 83; Jeffer- 
son’s letter to printer used as preface, 83; 
newspaper controversy, 83, 84. 

Parsons, Theophilus, pessimistic in cam- 
paign of 1792, 179. 

Paterson, New Jersey, manufacturing city 
promoted by Hamilton, 162. 

Paterson, William, Senator from New Jersey, 
and the Assumption Bill, 62. 

Pennsylvania Gazette, on Bank Bill, 78; on 
speculation, 88. 

Perry’s Gardens, New York City, 10. 

Philadelphia, social background, 116-39; 
capital removed to, 116; appearance of 
city in 1790’s, 117; government depart- 
ments closely connected, 118; private 
houses rooming-houses for Congressmen, 
120; lack of ‘respectful manners’ of the 
‘common people,’ noted by travelers, 121; 
life of working and middle classes not 
easy, 123; society luxury-loving and aris- 
tocratic, 123; English influence prominent, 
124; social life, free manners, 126, 127; 
yellow fever epidemic in 1793, 235-38. 

Philadelphia Advertiser, on Hamilton, 162. 

Philadelphia County Brigade, 275. 

Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 
Jefferson at rooms of, 138. 

Pickering, Timothy, and the Africa incident, 
287; writes of British to John Quincy 
Adams, 287; Secretary of State under 
Adams, sketch of, 326-31; ignores re- 
quests of Adams in French troubles, 430; 
delays preparation of instructions to 
French mission, 434; dismissed by Adams, 
456, 457. 

Pinckney, Charles, of South Carolina, joins 
Jefferson, 150; elected to Senate, 383. 

Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth, Minister to 
France, 342; joined with Marshall and 
Gerry in special mission in France, 345; 
Federalist candidate for President in 1800, 
459 ff. 

Pinckney, Thomas, Minister to Great 
Britain, his efforts to stop British viola- 
tions of Neutrality Proclamation, 224; 
set aside in negotiations of Jay Treaty, 
269; sketch of, 309, 310; selected by 
Hamilton and King as Federalist candi- 
date for President, in 1796, 310. 

Pintard, John, chief of Tammany Society, 
148. 

Porcupine’s Gazette, active in urging war 
with France, 350-60; publishes Martin’s 
attacks on Jefferson, 352, 353; abusive to 
Democrats, 354, 355; on Lyon-Griswold 
fight in House, 361. 

Powell, Mrs. Samuel, aunt of Mrs. William 
Bingham, 132. 

Priestley, Joseph, English liberal, addresses 
Tammany and other ‘Democratic So- 
cieties’ in New York, 259. 


138; 


530 


Randolph, Edmund, Attorney-General un-| 
der Washington, considers Hamilton’s 
Bank Bill unconstitutional, 77; on recep- 
tion of Genét, 215; succeeds Jefferson as 
Secretary of State, 239; and French 
Minister Faucet, 285; is dismissed from 
Cabinet, 286. 

Read, Jacob, Senator from South Carolina, 
denounced in Charleston for supporting 
Jay Treaty, 281. 

Reign of Terror, Alien and Sedition Lays 
produce, in 1798, 380-82; continued 
through two years, 383; riotings, 384; vic- 
tims, 386-93, 398-406. 

Report on Manufactures, Hamilton's, 161; 
newspaper comments on, 161. 

Report on the Public Credit, Hamilton’s, 43— 
68; debated in Congress, 44. 

Reynolds, James, seeks to blackmail Hamil- 
ton, 187. 

Ricketts, John, proprietor of the Circus, 
Philadelphia, 138. 

Rights of Man, by Thomas Paine, copy lent 
by printer to Jefferson, 82; in returning 
borrowed copy to printer Jefferson writes 
note commending pamphlet, 83; Jefferson’s 
note used by printer as preface, 83; effect 
of publication, 83, 84; newspaper contro- 
versy over, 83, 84. 

Rittenhouse, David, scientist and friend of 
Jefferson, 149; and Jefferson in library of 
Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 156; 
aids in preparations for reception of 
Genét, 219; president of Democratic Club 
of Philadelphia, 223. 

Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Duc de La, on 
Philadelphia, 124, 125; in Philadelphia, 
135. 

Rush, Dr. Benjamin, writes letters to 
Maclay against Assumption, 61; on 
Paine’s Rights of Man, 84; letter to Burr, 
147; Jefferson’s friend, 149; in yellow fever 
epidemic in Philadelphia, 237. 

Rutledge, John, denounces Jay Treaty, 280; 
appointment as Chief Justice not con- 
firmed, 289. 


Saint Cecilia Society, Democratic Club in 
Charleston, 223. 

St. Clair, General Arthur, failure of expedi- 
tion against Indians made issue by Jeffer- 
sonians in campaign of 1792, 175. 

Schuyler, Philip, father-in-law of Hamilton, 
elected Senator from New York, 36; letter 
of Hamilton to, on Washington, 41, 42; 
and the Assumption Bill, 62. 

*‘Scrippomony,’ Jefferson on, 87. 

Sedition Bill, purpose to crush Jeffersonian 
press, 376, 377; debates on, in Congress, 
marked by disorder, 378; passed by small 
margin, 380. 

Sedgwick, Theodore, speculator in public 


INDEX 


securities, defends Funding Bill, 48, 49; on 
funding of debt, 48, 49, 50; on Madison’s 
plan to amend Funding Bill, 55; speech 
on the Assumption Bill, 62; and Excise 
Bill, 72; and amendment to Excise Bill, 
73; on Giles’s resolutions attacking Treas- 
ury management, 201; recommended 
Adams’s nomination as Vice-President, in 
1789, 325; on results of 1798 elections, 383. 

Sedgwick, Mrs. Theodore, 134. 

Sherman, Roger, Representative and Sena- 
tor from Connecticut, on titles, 3. 

Sign of the Sorrel Horse, Philadelphia 
tavern, 119. 

Smith, Mrs. Margaret Bayard, on Jefferson, 
92, 93. 

Smith, Samuel, on Madison commerce re- 
solutions, 241. 

Smith, Jeremiah, on Philadelphians, 116. 

Smith, William, Representative from South 
Carolina, on Madison’s amendment to 
Funding Bill, 55; chosen director of Bank 
of United States, 90; on Giles’s resolutions 
attacking Treasury management, 201, 
203; on Madison’s commerce resolutions, 
240, 242. 

Southwark Theater, Philadelphia, 137. 

Speculation, in government securities, 44— 
47; members of Congress involved, 46-48; 
in stock and scrip, 87; fraud and counter- 
feiting, 88; Hamilton shocked and con- 
cerned, 88; bubble bursts in 1792, 176; 
Hamilton’s policies charged as cause of 
panic, 177; newspaper comments on, 177. 

Spooner’s Vermont Journal, on the Jay 
Treaty, 283. 

Steele, John, North Carolina, 181. 

Stewart, Mrs. Walter, daughter of Blair 
McClenachan, social leader of Philadel- 
phia, 132. 

Strong, Caleb, Senator from Massachusetts, 
9; and the Assumption Bill, 62. 

Sullivan, James, lawyer, pamphleteer, and 
orator for the Democrats, 145. 


Tammany, Sons of, rival organization to 
Society of the Cincinnati, 148; at first non- 
partisan, then fervid Jeffersonians, 148. 

Tariff, in First Congress, 19; in Second Con- 
gress, 161; Hamilton’s Report on Manufac- 
tures excites little attention, 161. 

Taylor, John, of Caroline, a Jeffersonian 
leader in Virginia, 149, 150; Jeffersonian 
leaders confer at home of, 205; pamphlet 
analyzing vote in Congress vindicating 
Hamilton, attributed to, 205, 206; intro- 
duces Virginia Resolutions in Legislature, 
409. 

Tilley, Count, 135. . 

Treaty with the Southern Indians, Wash- 
ington’s attitude on presentation to the 
Senate, 21, 22. 


} 


INDEX 


(Trumbull, John, paints portrait of Hamil- 

' ton, 162. 

Tucker, George, editor of Blackstone’s 
Commentaries, 169. 

Twining, Thomas, in Philadelphia, 120. 


United States Chronicle, on Freneau’s at- 
tacks on Hamilton, 164. 


Venable, Abraham B., of deputation from 
Congress to Hamilton on the Reynolds 
charges, 187. 

Vermont Journal, on Hamilton’s Passaic 
Falls scheme, 162. 

Vining, John, Representative from Dela- 
ware, and Assumption, 61; Maclay on, 61. 

Virginia Resolutions, written by James 
Madison, and introduced in Legislature 
by John Taylor of Caroline, 409; contem- 
porary opinions of, 409-11. 


Wadsworth, Jeremiah, Representative from 
Connecticut, speculator in certificates, 
47 n.; sneers at soldiers of Revolution, 55, 
56; elected director of Bank of United 

- States, 90. 

Warville, Brissot de, and Mrs. Bingham, 
128, 129. 

Washington, George, reception on arrival in 
New York, 6, 7; inaugurated President, 7; 
bored by dignities and ceremonial of 
office, 16, 17; his solemn dinners, 18; pre- 
sents in person treaty with Southern 
Indians for ratification by Senate, 20; an- 
noyed by proposal to refer treaty to com- 
mittee, 21; rents house of Robert Morris 
in Philadelphia, 119; endeavors, unsuc- 
cessfully, to effect reconciliation between 
Jefferson and Hamilton, 171; Hamilton 
refuses to discontinue attacks in Fenno’s 
Gazette, 172; and the French Revolution, 
214; issues Neutrality Proclamation, 216; 
and Jefferson in the case of the Little Sarah, 
228; reluctantly accepts Jefferson’s resig- 
nation, 233, 234; appoints Jay special 
envoy to Great Britain, 247; attacks 
Democratic Societies in Message, 261; 
delays signing Jay Treaty, 285; his prestige 
used to make Treaty more acceptable, 286; 
is attacked by Democratic press, 286-88; 
refuses to comply with request of House 





531 


for papers pertaining to Jay Treaty, 298; 
refuses to be a candidate for a third term, 
308; accepts chief command of army in 
prospective war with France, 413; selects 
Hamilton, Pinckney, and Knox as major- 
generals, 413. 

Washington City, new capital, in 1800, 486- 
89; ‘city of magnificent distances,’ but 
mud roads, 487. 

Whiskey Boys, the. 
tion. 

Whiskey Insurrection, the, 250-56; grew 
out of enforcement of Excise Law, 251; 
Hamilton active in suppressing, 254-56; 
ringleaders arrested, harshly treated, and 
jailed, 255; most of prisoners acquitted on 
trial, 255; two convicted, but pardoned by 
Washington, 256; tempest in a teapot, 256. 

Williamson’s Gardens, New York City, 10. 

Willing, Thomas, business partner of Robert 
Morris, elected director of Bank of United 
States, 90. 

Wingate, Paine, on Federal Hall, 2. 

Witherspoon, John, president of Princeton, 
157, 

Wolcott, Mary Ann, sister of Oliver Wolcott, 
afterward Mrs. Chauncey Goodrich, 134. 

Wolcott, Oliver, of Connecticut, on Hamil- 
ton’s religious views, 41; mouthpiece for 
Hamilton, 59, 60; on Philadelphians, 116; 
on demonstrations against Jay Treaty, 
275; Adams’s Secretary of the Treasury, 
sketch of, 331-34. 

Wolcott, Mrs. Oliver, called ‘the magnifi- 
cent,’ 134. 

Wythe, George, Virginia lawyer and politi- 
cian, 96; presides at meeting in Richmond 
denouncing Jay Treaty, 282. 


See Whiskey Insurrec- 


X Y Z papers, Federalists familiar with, 
before publication, 364; Hamilton sees 
trump card in them for war party, 364; 
Jeffersonians kept in ignorance, 364; ex- 
citement intense on publication, 365, 366; 
‘millions for defense, but not one cent for 
tribute,’ a clarion call, 366; rioting in 
Philadelphia, 367. 


Yellow Cat, the, Philadelphia tavern, 120. 
Yellow fever, in Philadelphia, 237, 238; in 
New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, 380. 


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